Geoff Kersey Watercolour Technique ⎮Summer and Autumn Trees⎮Watercolour Landscape

well we've done a techniques section on winter trees so we're going to follow that up now with a symmetry and an autumn tree basically I'm going to be using the dry brush technique this is a good one for using dry brush technique so they were able to get that bit of hit-and-miss effect where where we get gaps in the foliage that you can see the the branches so I've got a just a couple of rough drawings with not a lot of detail because it's all about the paint in this you weave you decide where to put the branches and how many to put in etcetera when you've got some paint on I've got a number-10 brush so we'll mix a bit of color for this for the summer tree so we want a nice bright green good combination for that is and I've used this again and again in paintings not too thin not too watery it's aureolin and cobalt blue and a little bit of raw Sienna just so it's not such a lime green it just makes it slightly more olive and then we want to a dark green and for that one I'm going to take our eel in again and this time for ultramarine blue in which goes a lot darker because ultramarine is a richer darker blue than cobalt but it actually looks too blue and a good one for calming it down and darkening it at the same time is some burnt sienna okay so let's the way that you where you position the lighter green and the darker green depends on the direction of the light so let's just imagine for both these examples we've got the light coming from the right and I've got a number-10 brush and obviously the size of brush you'd use with depending on how big this tree is in Europe in the particular painting you're doing but for this sort of stud this is about maybe three and a half inches tall about four inches across so a number 10 is ideal again this technique requires some rough paper and this is ash 300-pound knots but as I've said before that that's the last that isn't a rough paper it's got a really good texture to it and I've got my thumb at one side of the handle and four fingers at the other side so that I can get the flat of the brush on the paper rather than dabbing with the point and the shape is it's roughly the shape is roughly a semicircle so let's let's get that the the foliage should be more broken towards the edge of the tree and more dense towards the center of it so you can press on a bit more deposit more paint in the center of it and allow your brush to run out paint get a bit lower on paint as you get towards the edge and that's the basic shape of the tree something to avoid I see this when I'm teaching this technique in a live situation something that happens quite a lot is people dabble with the brush like that the print with it whereas it's more of a scumble if you like a skidding across the paper almost in a random shape to get that tree like shape and then I'm going to get the dark green you need to get the dark green in while the light green is still damp and let's we can float that in getting the darker color over to the left-hand side away from the light and then lightening lightening the stroke when I get over that side so that there's more dark on the left and I can I can strengthen up the dark just a bit more still using a dry Bush method back strengthen that up a bit more emphasizing that towards the left because the lights coming from the right you could put a little bit of the dark underneath you whichever side that's at it's in the shade a little bit there I can get a smaller brush now I've got a number two brush make sure it's clean and you can enhance that with a few little extra bits of the dark green now that's that's drifted together quite well actually you can sometimes encourage it to blend by going back to the lighter green but they really needy I think that's blended quite well bear in mind though that you have to be quickly after going with the dark green while the light green is still damp so that you don't get like two halves to a tree and the emerging blend so it is essential to have to call a mixed and ready before you start so that that's about the planning you know what colors you're going to need sometimes a little touch of lemon will inhale help - and this is neat lemon yellow this will help to make the light side even lighter but maybe fuelie picking out a few leaves that are catching the lye and this this exaggerated sivan moss or the difference between the light side of the tree and the door outside and something else to observe as well as this that's that's very important is your dark green still has to have the light green underneath it if you paint the light side with light green and the dark side with dark green which you might think that's the way to do it then it'll look like just the truth changes color rather than actually becoming denser and darker because it's not getting the sunlight so you do need that that light green over the whole thing and then you put the dark green onto that dark side of it okay maybe just maybe I could just go fiddling a bit now really but maybe just I could strengthen that dark side just a bit more and underneath there now that you can really go on to the next stage without waiting for that to dry and I'm going to get just a bit of light on the tree trunk I'll take a bit of I'll think a bit of raw Sienna with a touch of bird sienna and I want a bit of dark brown as well for the branches and the shaded area of the trunk that's burnt sienna and ultramarine blue so I made a bit of tissue clean the brush and the number two brushes ideal for this but if you were painting a bigger tree you'd probably want the number four okay and then I'm painting that I'm painting that light on the drum sounds like a helicopter just gone overhead okay now again bear in mind where the lights coming from it's coming from the right so the the left-hand part of the trunk is in shadow apart from here where where you start to lose the trunk in the foliage it's all in shadow okay now sometimes you might need to just dump in your brush and encourage those to blend and then where you get again that branch they see when it when we lose sight of it in the foliage it's it gets it's darker and then where you get little glimpses of the foliage and these are difference on everything every time you paint it it'll be different you now got to look for places where the sufficient gap in the foliage for you to see a little bit of branch detail now if the foliage is still damp that can help actually because it means that this will soften into the damp parts but you'll get a harder edge to depict the branch where you cross in the dry paper and don't overdo it it's got to be that just little areas where your glimpse in the branches rather than it can't if you do too many branches that can look like you've painted a winter tree with a summer one behind it so it's got to be just now and again where you might glimpse a branch and then you would lose it in the foliage and that I'd say that's maybe a little bit of blending there and I think of lemon on the brush where they where the trunk disappears into the greenery there it looks a little bit like the trunk is in front of it and we need to take it into the greenery a little bit of lemon can do with can help with that and just make it look as though it disappears up into that foliage so that's a symmetry very similar very similar approach with an autumn tree but with different colors so let's get some let's get some nice color for this I think for the golden side of the tree where the autumn colors a catch in the light let's get some Oriole in and burnt sienna and then for the for the side that's in the shade I think what we want for that's more of a brown so if we if we take some burnt sienna with a bit of not a lot of ultramarine blue you're not trying to make a really dark brown or a black he's probably like a once of a better analogy like like milk you're not playing chocolate that would be just a bit too dark more like milk chocolate and that is the bird sienna and bit of ultramarine blue again you've got to get you've got to have the colors ready because when I start painting them I've got to get the dark color in while the lighter colors still wet and also in the set the same as we did with the green you need the lighter color over the whole tree and that way it'll look like a shaded side at the left rather than just a tree that's changed color so let's let's get that nice rich autumn color again it's not it's not it's not printing like that it's scumbling like that you start in the middle because when your brush is wetter it'll deposit more paint and as you work towards the edge and your brush gets a bit drier that you'll you'll more easily achieve that broken foliage okay and again its companies keep the brush moving scum bin about you don't want to be able to see the shape of the brush in the finished painting I think that's okay I'm going to a smaller brush a number six for the brown for the darker side of the tree and let's get straight in with that maybe a bit too much I'll move rush there and that's the the darker side no of course this dark brown immediately becomes diluted when it gets in with the origin less dark but that's okay because if you mix it dark enough you'll have allowed for that maybe even a little bit heavy-handed they're blocked out the light a lot there I wish I'd have got a bit more what let's just try something see if we can take a bit off get some more white paper and then dry brush that that's it that would leave a few gaps so you can you know if you spot what's going wrong early enough you can't usually do something about it I'm gonna make the dark brown now just just to emphasize the side that's facing away from the light the left-hand side I've made the dark round just a little bit stronger by adding a touch more ultramarine and then again the lower part is in shade anyway whichever side it's at we'll just do a bit of blending with that number two rush now you can uh in the same way as they did in the last one with a number two brush you could use lemon yellow for a few highlights but this time let's try adding a bit of burnt sienna to it and we can just add a few highlights to that right-hand side maybe to pick out a few little leaves and things where the lights catching them maybe a bit of orange in there to blend them in and then I can I can put a bit more orange in and I can do the same thing now with the dark brown to enhance the darker side then just travel to dry brush work with it I don't think maybe a touch more of that lemon yellow with burnt sienna okay now the same principle applies to the tree trunk we'll get some raw sienna and burnt sienna for the whole of the truck again the shadow on the trunk should still have that lighter color underneath it need to mix a bit more dark brown that's the owner an ultramarine so the dark side of the trunk is this one is this left-hand side again the trunk is all dark where it disappears under the foliage the branch has become dark as well maybe it's a bit too much dark in that so I can put a bit more life back into it by adding a bit more of the light color let's get some more dark brown and then again the same applies you look for one or two places where you would see a bit of branch work supporting always foliage but too obvious that I've not been quite as successful with this one in that I've not got quite as many gaps to see the branches ooh but that doesn't particularly matter because as long as I don't paint them over the foliage anyway just to get some more branches it would go into there and then just using a little bit of the orange colour let's make it blend at that point so it really gives the impression that the trunk is disappearing out of view amidst all that sir all that foliage nothing that's I think that's about right so we'll get those dry and have a look at them so hopefully get the idea with that it's it's all down to that dry brushwork and giving that broken effect which is a lot more sparse and a lot more broken towards the edge of the tree and more dense in the center which is as it should be the key to doing that is that when you've charged your brush start in the middle and work out towards the edge don't start at the edge because you'll tend to put a big blob on the paper because he brushes got quite a lot of paint on it and as you work towards the edge in the brush gets drier your marks become a bit more broken and allow us to see the light through the gaps in the foliage another tree that I often come across in paintings it's often part of the landscape is a spruce or or fir tree and I think he's worth me just taking a moment to to show you the particular method I use for that let's look we could put one here first of all let's let's get a little bit of drawing I do then I tend to do the minimum of of drawing with them and this isn't a dry brush technique this is very much a a wetting wet technique but I tend to do the the minimum of drawing just a guide really to shape and position I do the rest with the with the pain now a good shape for that is its it doesn't narrow towards the top but he's hardly really wide at the bottom you don't want to make it look like a wall with Christmas tree so a little bit so not too wide at the bottom but do get to a point at the top but that's plenty that's enough drawing now because generally we would we because we want to wet background for this we might as well wet it with some a bit of blue to look like we've got the sky behind us but before I deal with that fact I'll get the blue first let's just get some cut coal Bowl it's close it's a little bit gray it's got a little bit of gray in it that but it's okay that's okay the main thing with this is to get a good rich dark green so I'm going to take Viridian I can mix it on top of that previous dark doing that Viridian then also marine plenty of ultramarine in it a spruce is often quite a bluey green that's to turquoise though it's just not calm you know if it's too strong so burnt sienna is ideal for darkening it I'm taking out that bright the Rhydian okay so Viridian a lot of people find varying the bit tricky so color I use a lot but you have to learn how to to control it so let's let's start by wet in the background with a natural sponge over the whole of the tree and then we'll just paint it a wet background in I can use this half inch flat brush just paint a wet background in with some blue the timing azing with actually with Azzam with a lot of water color timing is is crucial you can you can be in too easy I know what we're saying he should work quickly but you can be in too much of a hurry and when you touch that dark green in it runs like mad and it disperses far too quickly becomes too soft and furry and too light because if the backgrounds too wet it's like adding water to you paint it dilutes it so you need to be a little bit patient and I'm starting with a small brush another thing to mention is I've seen this go around many a time in workshops where the person mixes it just doesn't got it thick enough this is this is probably like single cream consistency it's quite a thick quite a strong paint now I'm looking at that it's still shiny the shine hasn't gone off yet the the right timing is is not when the shine is gone nothing because he's probably - driving the right time in his just as the shine starts to fade could be about now and I've started with the small brush again start in the center of the tree and work your way outwards because this the center of the tree is more dense so if it spreads too quickly at first at least you're spoiled the tree because that's still it that's in the center where it is more dense anyway so let's try that that looks about right and I just work out was the little marks are making if you think about a u-shape like that because that the branches turn up was towards the light that will usually work well so let's get and then it's just a case of thinning out your mark not paint a triangle at the top you just thin out the marks until you put in the tiniest little dot at the top now this brush is probably too thin to do the whole tree another thing to look at with this is leave plenty of spaces between the the pieces of foliage because if you don't it gets it just gets too heavy and thick it just becomes a big dark green triangle I think now we'll go a little bit bigger brush I've got a number six here charged it with paint still got a good point though so even though I can make bigger marks with a more dense lower foliage I can still get them are quite fine at the edge there now I'm not going to go all the way to the ground we'll leave a bit of a gap where we can see the the trunk don't make it too symmetrical either can you see how I might go out that far with one branch not quite as far at that site but on the next branch I'll come a bit further out at that side unless so that's why overall it balances up without looking to perfectly symmetrical look at the gaps look sometimes at the gaps between your foliage very regular as well but there's a there's a basic shape happening maybe I've not got quite enough foliage lower down making it a little bit more dense there plenty of dark green in don't be afraid of this rich dark green in fact I could perhaps now go back to the number two which to make sure that we're branches towards the edge the foliage is much thinner and more broken yeah I think that should that should work well okay now unlike these trees because the whole of the background is where I can't start painting trunk and branches because I'll just stir I'll just end up with a soft furry mess so we need to just forget there a thing but we need to just leave that now to dry so that's okay just to check to make sure that my trunk is still growing up through the center of the tree and it isn't as I've painted that I've tended moved a little bit over to the right so I may have to just alter the trunk slightly and bring it to thee yeah bring it to the right like that okay now it will have a light dark side but as the trunks quite a lot narrower it's nothing like as noticeable but we still want some raw Sienna with a bit of burnt sienna and some rich dark brown so let's assume the lights coming from the same direction we put in some raw sienna and burnt sienna and then the dark now the dark if the trunk like the other ones gonna be all dark at the area immediately below where it gets lost in the foliage and then you can do a bit of blending dump clean brush and then it's just the dark brown the burnt sienna and ultramarine and look for one or two places where you'd get another glimpse of the trunk going up to over the middle of the tree don't paint the whole trunk all the way up because that would look like it was in front of it he's got to appear as though you're just glimpse in it in the irregular gaps in the foliage and it's not just the trunk as well you might see a few branches that support this foliage just coming out across there just glimpses of them down again probably more noticeable a bit lower down but again don't get not the two men you don't get carried away that is probably enough because most of the time the branches are going to be hidden by the foliage that they support him but I think I think that that's plenty of branch work on it I think that works well sometimes if the Foley if the branches and clumps look like they've been added on like that in front you need to go back that's not too bad to get away with that but just happen you need to go back to the dark green and maybe do a little bit of work to dissolve them into the foliage okay so that's a fir tree or a spruce you

Channel: Geoff Kersey

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Keywords: winter trees, autumn trees, painting, paint, watercolor, watercolour, art, artist, geoff kersey, tutorial, technique, tips, dry brush

Id: CnH1yxXsJB8

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 27 2018