This Technique Makes Oil Painting Tree Foliage Effortless

You have probably been told that to paint realistic landscape you absolutely need these a whole bunch of expensive specialized brushes. But what if I told you the real secret to my most realistic polished and most breathtaking texture is this. That's right, crumple up paper towel and roll of masking tape. Forget the pricey tools, the real magic is probably sitting in your kitchen drawer right now. Today I'm going to show you how these simple items are all you need to create stunning texture Australian grassland hill landscape painting. So this is all painting for beginners, so if you are interested stick around. First thing first, let's talk about supplies and I promise it's a short list. We have our MDF panel which I already treated with Kessar. For colors I'm keeping it simple, copper blue, titanium white, paints grey for sky and clouds, raw sienna, yellow ochre, olive green and sap green. These are going to give us the classic sun-stretched Australian hillside vibe. And of course the star of the show is the painter's blue masking tape and the basic roll of paper towel. But it's got to be the industrial paper towel because it's a little more tougher for this purpose. It doesn't leave any fluff on our panel. So question is why on earth are we using these? It's all about embracing a bit of happy chaos. Brush can be sometimes feel too controlled, almost too perfect. A crumpled paper towel, it's organic, unpredictable. It's the perfect tool for creating the random cluster patterns of foliage and the soft hazy light you see in nature. And the masking tape, what about the masking tape? That's our secret weapon for control. It's going to give us those sharp clean lines for our distant mountains creating an incredible sense of depth with almost zero effort. This is not about throwing your brushes away but about opening your mind to a new way of thinking about texture and forms. And it's about making art accessible and proving you don't need a fancy studio to create something truly beautiful. So you see what I've been doing I first started with a crumpled tight crumpled paper to create those clouds on the first time and then I changed my crumpled paper again for different color and I just add up a little bit more more highlights and then I decided to put a little bit more beans gray a little bit darker color. So it's a process and you have a look when you tap those those prints what has come out and then you soften up every time you soften up with your soft blending brush. If you want more detail of video about the clouds how to make those clouds with your paper towel I put the link down in the description below. On distant mountains I'm still using the paints gray and just using your brush to add up those distant mountains and what I'm doing here I just soften up the line where the mountains and then I drag the actually titanium white through the mountain as well to make it a little bit more distant mountain. Make sure your soft brush is every time when you drag that titanium white down that you just clean it up that it doesn't smudge the white bit of the sky and now we're just adding a yellow ochre mixed with the titanium white to make it very light because I do like the underpainting to be very light and here I'm using the raw sienna and adding up titanium white as well to keep it a little bit more lighter value for starters. So this is going to be our underpainting and using my soft blending brush to make sure it's a nice and smooth surface. The painting is completely dry now we split the blue masking tape in the middle to get a bit of shapes on the mountain and you push the masking tape how you want it to make your in your shape or how you want it and then we just apply darker paint on the top. In this case it's olive green and raw amber I think mixed a little bit so I just put the darker color on the where the mountain is and what happens now I can use my paper towel to get those highlights on the top of the mountain and this is an easy way and a very quick way to do those highlights like you can see here and we're just touching it up a little bit give it some color use your small blending brush to blend a little bit not too much just soften up a little bit those hard lines and now you can take your blue masking tape off if your mountain needs a bit of a soften up just soften up with your little angle brush not too much but just a little bit if it's got that little bit of leakage underneath the masking tape so you can correct it with your little soft brush and here I'm just shaping up with my paper towel just getting random lines and then I soften up with my blending brush as well so you can shape it up how you want it now and using your angle brush as well just adding up or just wiping and again I'm just splitting that blue masking tape in the middle a little bit more straight I don't doing too many pumps and humps with that one I just make it a little bit more straight and then just add up raw sienna so whole idea when you tear up the masking tape you can shape it up how you want it so like I said this in this case I want to make it a little bit straighter because it's on the front painting and then I'm just tapping up those random shape with my little tiny brumbled paper with olive green color and then I just tap it up and now I'm taking the blue masking tape off and just on the mountain line I just tap up a little bit over the the line and it's like a trees and you know it's just random like you can see it's like a distant mountain but you got a lot of like a forest and it's very like an Australian hillside forest look and now I'm using the olive green again I got this masking tape shape of the hill and just adding and changing my crumble paper like you can see I just make it very tight and but don't tap your crumble paper you know hard on paint you could have flattened your paint and then you just gently tap your crumble paper on paint and then you just tap all those three foliage with the darker colors first and then gently gently you build up with the highlights and now we just fold up our paper towel not crumble it actually make it very pointy with it and this way we'll do those tree branches and tree trunks as well but this is a good way to do those tiny tiny tree branches on the bush and even on a distant mountain we can make a little tree trunks like you can see it here when that is done we can take the blue masking tape off it's going to be our grass hillside and I got this fan brush which is very stiff one I can drag the paint when we just done it so it looks like it's grass in the distant grass and using masking tape as well to add those little bush on our hillside as well using your target colors first olive green on this case and then more you tap it more it sort of gets lighter because it's a transparent color this one so it's a great color I usually use on doing the tree foliage and bush foliage as well now you can just shape up your bush foliage a little bit and then we're gonna start adding up the raw sienna and yellow ochre and get those grass twigs done for the for the fields and here I'm just adding up a little bit indian yellow and burnt amber just to get feel of it but um it's just too strong so I kind of wipe it up to make it a little bit lighter and now I'm just adding a raw sienna and yellow ochre just thick thick paint and then I'm using my rough bristle brush to get those twigs and even on the distance I just add up a little bit more color I reckon this is um very good ways to for oil painting for beginners and get starters and you start learning your oil paint how it acts and this is just a very easy way to get into it and you don't have to um over think about it your sky and those clouds and and uh tree foliage and it just does itself that um the paper towel technique and so easy to use and just be gentle with it and you can see you can see the result tap by tap and if you're happy with it then just leave it if you're not even wipe it out if you got the underpainting already dry also you get a nice texture with this um this technique we fold up our paper towel again and make it very tight um twist and then we could do those um branches again on this um australian bush plan on the front I'm gonna leave this painting now for overnight that it dries and you can continue doing all those details and glazing as well okay and so make sure that your oil painting is completely dry before you use the blue masking tape technique and we why we're using the masking tape is just to keep that nice and straight line there were three lines at first and then I just follow that line and just adjust it and tapping those three lines with my paper towel tiny paper towel and going through with my angle brush as well and then I just add a little bit more yellow ochre on that field and I start adding up little tree tree distant trees and because it's on the distance to make sure that it's a very very tiny marks on on that field so we're using the masking tape to just get those straight lines either that or just protect actually I've got one in the angle this protects the the hill underneath while I'm doing those um three lines on the distance and just adding up a little bit more color and this the glazing just to either wipe it a little bit and adding a little bit and when you're using the paper towel get the little uh straight lines as well blending it a little bit and here I'm just adding up a little bit more burnt sienna and using the bigger brush as well to get a little bit more straight line this is a great technique for oil painting for beginners because when you get the actually the landscape done you just color it basically just use your soft brush and randomly just add the colors on the field and then you can just adjust it with your paper towel or with your brush so I'm just basically make it very light on the field and then I just add up in darker colors like here I'm doing just a burnt sienna just adding on on the corner a little bit more shadier place and even adding up on the hills and the fields and I just like this burnt sienna color because it does um it does give that um beautiful landscape colors especially now Australian colors and very reddish and even on uh you can use them on the clouds as well because you lightly lightly just wipe it off and it's got that light very light light color on clouds as well and even on the distance I'm using the palette knife just to keep little um details on distant tree lines and and just randomly we doing the detailing basically there is a little trick I can show you how to do those wild flowers of Australia and I usually struggle with the little detailing as well so yeah but well cotton buds that they call it is a very handy tool I really hope you enjoyed this and feel inspired to look at your own kitchen drawer a little differently if you had fun painting along with me today please give this video a thumbs up and subscribe for more unconventional art secrets I would absolutely love to see what you created if you tried this technique so please tag me on the social media if you do thanks so much for painting with me and I'll see you in the next one thank you so much bye now