Digital painting make changes easier and faster without altering the original artwork.

 In this post I’ll give you detailed information to painting advantages using photoshop.Traditional changes may take longer and be quite extensive depending on what those adjustments are. This is part II of “The Advantage of Digital vs Traditional Painting”.

The Main Steps Involved

If using a traditional painting, preserving the original requires taking a good quality high resolution digital photo of the image for adjustments on Photoshop. If it’s a digital painting, it’s ready to go. Looking at our painting advantages.

• Separate layers

  It’s best to paint items on their own layer if digitally done. If working with photoed images, duplicate and separate items to their individual layer. These painting advantages allow adjustments without affecting items you may not want affected.I begin by resizing my background glow which was larger than I needed. I do this three times in my video demo till I’m satisfied with the look.

• Duplication and Resize

  I duplicate by hitting “command (Mac) or ctrl (pc) J” and then I hit “command or ctrl T” to transform or resize it. Pulling the side or corner lines.

• Paint In or Erase Out

  Once resized, paint over or erase out area to match the existing surrounding color you want. The point of interest in this painting is the candle. I started this painting without a drawing, free forming it as I went, therefore I notice drawing accuracy issues.

The Technical Applications 

• Transforming or Adjusting Shapes

  The candle adjustment started by typing “L” for lasso tool to isolate off the top part of it. Then type “V” for move tool. I used the right pointing arrow key to shift it over a little because it was slightly off center to the stalk of the candle then I cleaned up the edge where the shift happened. There’s a void mark that’s left when you shift items in this manner.

  In the same way as was done for the top of the candle, the bottom of the candleholder is done. Isolate area typing “L” for lasso tool, type “command or ctrl J” to duplicate that image, then hit “command or control T” to transform or stretch the image to whatever size or shape wanted. After that, erase unwanted areas of the top image (duplicate) to allow areas of the bottom image (original) to show through that you want to keep.

  

• The same is done for the stalk and handle of the candleholder as with the base. Isolate, duplicate, transform it, erase unwanted areas allowing wanted area of the bottom to show through fitting it to the original candle with one difference. For the handle transform I used “Edit”, “Transform”, “Distort”. Distort allows for odd shape resizing.
• I used “command or ctrl T” to transform the shape of the shadow under the candleholder for more oval accuracy, then I changed the Opacity of that layer to make it a little lighter to fit. I intentionally painted it darker because I wanted to make the opacity adjustment, than I made painting adjustments into it.

• Other Transform Options

  Realizing that the bottom portion of the candle holder was crooked. I marquee it off, isolate it, duplicate, then clicked “Edit”, “Transform”, “Skew” to shift it up to straighten it out. Once straighten, I erased unwanted portions on the right side of it.

  

  To get it symmetrical, I duplicate again, click “Edit”, “Transform”, “Flip Horizontally”, erase off the unwanted areas. I paint back into it my shadow side colors and this gives me more accuracy in my drawing. I repeat the same process again on the base of the candle holder – duplicate it, then repeat “Edit”, “Transform” and then “Flip Horizontally”. I make painting adjustments for it to fit the base of the candle.

  

  Making an adjustment on the smoke stream design, I first adjusted the transparency or Opacity for that layer, then shifted the design by going to “Edit”, “Transform”, “Perspective”. Tilted out the top end to the shape I wanted then soften it with a Gaussian Blur.

  

  I repeat the process with a second smoke stream design. I painted it in at full opacity over the candle, then simply lessen that Opacity. Did the Gaussian Blur again, then transform  the shape using “Edit”, “Transform”, and this time “Warp”. Rather than having it directly over the candle I warped it to go below it for a better design.

These painting advantages have no match in traditional painting.

• Soften Areas

  Wanted to soften some of the paint modeling in the background. So I duplicate the background, clicked on “Filter”, “Blur”, “Gaussian Blur” to soften it to the degree that I desired, then erase out some of the areas that I wanted the original background to show through so everything was not completely soft.

  

• Color or Value Shifts

  I decided for a cooler color to my background. There are two ways of doing this. Either making a Layer Mask or duplicating the background. Click on “Image”, “Adjustment”, “Selective Color”. In the color bar, I click the “Down Arrow”, I chose “Neutral” and that’s for an overall color change. I also choose “Hue Saturation” because different parameters do different things to the color. I shifted the colors to what worked for me then erased out areas I did not want, left some of the cooler colors, then introduced additional colors into it.

  

• Layer Mask Adjustments

  

  Changed the values of my background by using a “Levels” mask. That allows me to change how light, dark, or pale, I want something to be. Then I erase out areas not wanted and leave the amount desired in my background.

  The “Levels” mask was used for the candle as well. The candle was isolated or marquee off, darkened, erase area not wanted. This create a shadow on the left and right side of the candle which will help with roundness. Also used to brighten the area around where the glow hits the floor. Then erase out what I didn’t want.

  For the candleholder, a “Selective Color”, “Neutral”, layer mask was used to brighten the color then erase off areas I didn’t want to utilized. Also used to shift the color of the shadow under the candleholder adding purplish hues.

  Decide I want a slightly darker soft edge to separate the surface that the candle is sitting on from the surrounding darkness behind it. To do that I used a Layer Mask and darken it then erase off what I didn’t want. Adjusted the opacity or transparency level so it would be very subtle.

For a final adjustment I marquee off the candle for the entire layer by holding down “command or ctrl” while clicking the “level image” itself which gives me the complete marquee for the entire item on the layer, then I create a layer mask which allows me to lighten or darken and then I erase out specific things I don’t want.

These are some of the quick fixes that can be done using the painting advantages of digital that cannot be done traditionally.

You may find these post helpful as well: “How To Paint Digitally With Photoshop”, and “Painting With Photoshop on Computer”.

Hope you gained some insights. Give it a try!

So often I hear my wife or kids say “why in the world would you want to paint that“?

It’s funny the way the mind of an artist works. Whether a photographer or painter, I suppose we see things as they could be. We look through a lens of inspiration all around us, as seen in everyday life.

Artistic Photo Reference

As many artists do, I spent a lot of time throughout my life taking photos for artistic reference. You never know what shot will become the next painting inspiration.

Like this photo, taken on a hike through the Angeles National Forest.

Long after that hike was over and had become a distant memory, I ran across this reference photo in my quest to find an interesting subject for a limited palette painting.

If you are an artist, you should read my article about how and why artists should paint with a limited  to challenge themselves.

So Why This Photo?

Something about the composition of the rocks in relation to each other, and the trees behind it drew my eye. The manner in which the rocks intersected would make for a visually interesting waterfall painting.

The texture of the moss and even the leaves would also serve as an artful emphasis. Granted, this would take a little imagination…of what could be rather than simply the reality of what the eye sees.

For example: the manner in which rocks came down in a slant and intersect each other could create a visually dynamic waterfall. The reality is somewhat underwhelming. Now take a look at what I did with the falls in this close up of the painting.

By accentuating the waterfall as it spills over the unique rock formation, it gave me an opportunity to play with light as an accent in this piece.

The water doesn’t end in a foamy mass, but rather a visually stunning highlight and pop of color. I wanted to keep the eye focused on where the water would come down and be the focal point culminating in the reflective pool below.

You’ll note that in the actual photo the reflection is a mirror image. I wanted to keep the painting more impressionistic rather than detail oriented, so it became prudent to leave that mirror image out.

Artistic Challenges With This Painting

Because I used a limited palette for this painting, the challenge would be in the highlights. I wanted the painting to have a sunset flavor to it. So amid the green of the forest, the hues of sunset break through the trees.

This is actually tricky, and as an artist I had to “cheat” the light to do it. In the real world, this kind of light isn’t going to give you a green shadowing. It would produce more of a dark grayish blue, or subtle purple haze. Since I am limiting my palette to see how far I can go with two main hues, it stretches the imagination to how you can achieve a visually stunning highlight and shadow interplay with just those colors…even if it breaks the rules.

Adding An Element For Interest

I felt the painting looked a little plain when it was completed. Even as I worked the lighting, it wasn’t enough to sustain the piece on it’s own. So to visually help it out, I added a tree that is not in the photograph.

The tree would be as if it was bending into the picture… it couldn’t come from the bottom because there is water there, so I had to curve it into the picture.

Artist gotta figure out how to cheat to make things work better.

The lighting is what I was hoping for. To get that sense of the sunset flavor in the painting. Creativity includes finding ways of pushing color into different possibilities. I’ll look at the color wheel and say what color do I want to play with. And that will be my main color to do a haze over everything…or the under color coming through to effect the look. That’s one of the ways I approach limited palettes.

The advantage of digital painting gives quicker adjustments to your artwork.

Learn these digital advantages and discover new tools to help with painting.

General Explanation To Digital Painting.

This post will be a general explanation, the next post will be the specific how too of the advantage of digital painting. Usually I start with a line drawing when I paint on computer, but this time I thought I would approach it as I do my plein air painting with loose brush work then tighten it down as I get closer to the finish of the painting. This is a deviation from what I would normally do as far as computer painting.

• Lay In Basic Structure

  I laying in the basic structure of this candle painting. By starting with the background, then I rough in the candle on it’s own separate layer.

• Building from The Basics

  It get it’s lights, darks, and medium tones or values. Which helps me build the structure of what I’m painting. The candle will have it’s dark area at the bottom and it’s light area at the top to give the glow and luminosity of the candle.

• Making Adjustments

  I make computer changes which I will give how to explanation to on the next post. These are examples of the advantage of digital painting, which allow changes such as the size of the candle glow on the background.

Adjusting the size of the candle base.

Stretching the width of the candle stalk.

Adjusting the size and shape of the handle. These adjustments would require more time to make with traditional paint than when done on a computer.

• Approach to Adjustments

  The basic approach for me, is to duplicate the part of the artwork I want to adjust, then resize them to the look I want, and marry it the existing art. It will completely cover what does not work or you may need to remove parts of the unwanted elements that are not cover up by the duplicate areas. There are adjustment layers for altering values, colors, light exposure, vibrancy and a few other effects to work with.

• Finalizing Visual Interest

  I slowly build more detail into the candle, making it more believable. I make sure I’m attentive to volume or roundness when building the values.

Even as I apply reflectiveness into the candle holder. I must remember the principal of light direction. I add more light into the flame to increase the glow effect. I’ll also add a designed smoke effect and light speckles for visual interest then warp the image to a shape that work better visually.

Another adjustment I could never do in traditional paint. It’s important put additional imagery on a separate layer which will allow for the adjustments without effecting the other parts of the art.

The Advantage of Digital

The advantage of digital painting adds benefit to my traditional painting when I run into difficulties of thing not working as I want. I can make digital adjustment from a photo of my artwork to resolve painting issues. Even make digital changes to the images including color corrections before final prints are made of the art.

Here’s my final of this digital candle painting.

Catch my next post so you can take full advantage of digital painting adjustments to make your painting dreams a bit easier.

You can get additional insights on digital painting from the post, “How to Paint Digitally With Photoshop” and “Painting With Photoshop On Computer”.

This quick tip will help you paint volume in tree foliage for more roundness in your work.

From Flat to Rounded Fullness

There are times when viewing my paintings that I think the trees appear more flat than round. So I need to remember while I’m painting, to think in a way that will help me convey fullness in the canopy of trees. Today I want to share a simple tip of how we can get fullness in a tree canopy.

• Envisioning The Round

  A method that can help us have fullness in our trees is to think of trees as broken up into leaf clusters of large, medium and small size irregular domes.

• Think Large Dome:

  Think of the entire tree canopy first of all as a dome. Even as we brake the tree down into smaller clusters, we want the total tree to have the look of roundness. This is why we start with one large dome.

• Values To The Domes :

  That dome would have a light side, a medium side, and a shadow side, even though we can see light breaking through various areas. But if we think of it in the dome form, it will make it simpler for us. See the whole tree as having light, middle, and dark sides.

• Think Medium Domes:

  We also want to recognize that the tree has clusters of leaves that are medium-size domes which branch out of the large dome, such as the three shown in the image below. When we think of it that way, we still want to have a light side, middle side, and shadow side. This will help us paint fullness at this scale of the tree.

  

• Think Small Domes:

  We have to go down to the next size of domes, as well, to realize that there are smaller clusters of leaves. These branch out of the medium size clusters. I’ll only show a few here, for the smaller clusters can be many. Each of these small dome cluster of leaves must also have a light side, a medium side, and a dark side. If we envision the tree in this manner, we’ll have a better chance of painting fullness in the total, overall tree.

  

• The Tree Trunk and Branches
:

  Let’s also view the trunk of the tree as being a cylinder that has a light side, a medium side, and a dark side. And all the branches that go out into the leaf clusters as cylinders of various sizes that have a light side, a medium side, and a dark side.

  

Quick Recap to Paint Fullness

Envision the entire tree canopy as a big dome with three values to give a sense of roundness. Then out of the big dome are medium size leaf clusters that become domes with their values. Out of the medium size domes are the small cluster domes that catch the light, the medium, and the dark. Now we can paint fullness in our trees by keeping this simple concept in mind.

• Group the Leaves:

  Try not to paint leaf after leaf after leaf, but do them as blocks of shapes; groupings that will give the light, medium, and dark values. Then have a few individual leaves appear at the edge of the groupings. This simulates the look of lots of leaves without drawing or painting every one of them.

• Irregularity:

  Be careful not to get a dome shape appearance in the artwork. We still want irregularity in the look of the tree canopy.

The dome concept is to help us remember how we can give values of light, middle, and shadow tones, to paint fullness in the tree canopy. Check out my related video post “How To Paint Roundness In Even Light” for additional tips and tutorials.

Hope it works for you! Try it out and let me know how you did!

Roundness An Important Principle

There are times when we’re painting nature scenes and the details may get in our way and we forget a very important principle: to paint roundness, or volume. Perhaps the lighting is of such that there is no strong sense of direction of light coming from any given side with an obvious shadow being cast. That happens on days that it may be cloudy or, for example, when the sun goes down behind a hill and it makes the area fully in shadow, but there’s still a lot of light that makes the subject matter evenly lit. Some forget to paint roundness in these situations.

On these trees, it may be difficult to tell which direction the light is coming from. You can get a sense of shadowing in some spots. But in others, it feels flat. When this happens, there’s a tendency to paint details without volume, fullness, or roundness.

The Simple Solution

So how do you resolve issues like this when you’re painting? Even though an area may be in the shadow and you want the appearance of even lighting, you can still give it roundness by having a lighter side and a darker side.

• Accentuate The Shadow
  You accentuate the shadow slightly, not a lot, just a little to aid the roundness. I’ll give an example of that here so you can get a visual to what I’m talking about.
  I’m using the computer to demonstrate, therefore I’ll darken this tree with the layer mask. Then I’ll take the right side of the shadow out. Now it has a darker side and the lighter side is its original value, which you can see here. This helps it feels a bit rounder.

• Add A Reflective Light
  To give it more interest, I’ll add warmth to the left, which is now the shadow side, as a reflective light. See what it looked like before? Now it has more dimension.
  Think this way when you’re painting. Think to paint roundness, not just textured detail. The sense of light has not gotten stronger as I made the change, but there’s more core shadow and reflective light.

Painting Demo to Make The Point

Now I want to demonstrate this from a painting standpoint using the computer. So I will cover the left side of this picture with white to paint in my example.

• Texture, Detail Needs Roundness
  All too often I see paintings with lots of texture and no sense of roundness or volume to the subject that they are painting. So here’s my illustration of a textured or detailed tree trunk. 
This is missing the volume, the roundness, the fullness, that it should have – the shadow and light side to help it feel round. We don’t want just texture to describe the tree for us. We want to paint roundness as well. So how do we do that?

Remembering The Principle: Paint Roundness

The solution is the same concept as you saw with the photograph. As you’re painting, remember to paint roundness. So I paint a dark side that helps it feel rounder. See the before above and the after below. If you want to accentuate some of the texture, you can do that. Just paint in more detail.

Then I’ll give a warm reflective touch for color interest. This tree has come from a just-texture-look with no volume, to having more roundness.
 Now it has a core shadow and a reflective back end. It’s not as flat as it was before.

So don’t just think about texture; see the texture but think about roundness, about volume. Then remember to paint roundness while painting texture also.

Hope this was helpful. Do check out my blog/video Creating Dimensions with Core Shadow and Improve Your Artwork With Direction of Light as they share additional concepts connected with this topic.

Let’s keep those paintings coming!

The Takeaway: Direction Of Light

Today we are going to look at one simple rule that can make our paintings better. That’s simply making sure of where the direction of light is. My intent is to help you remember from the outset of your painting to become aware of this basic rule.

This Demo’s Tool Of Use

My method of showing you is by correcting an existing painting: as you see the difference in the before and after, you will grasp the importance of keeping the direction of light in the forefront of your mind when you make your next painting. Therefore, I will paint digitally with Photoshop to help you see the difference, as well as preserve my wife’s original painting. My language in this article will involve both the painting I’m correcting and using Photoshop. By the way Photoshop is a good tool for solving painting problems. I use it when I’m having issues with a painting and am not sure which way to correct it.

Making The Change

Here’s the painting my wife did – and for someone who’s not an artist I thought this was an excellent job. Wonderful painting! However, more emphasis on direction of light can make this a better painting. There is some light there, just not enough for enhanced quality.

• Determine Direction of Light
  Let’s have light come from the upper right hand corner of the picture.

I’m going to take the middle section of this painting, the area inside the flowers, and accentuate these petals with light to improve it. This gives more dimension to the flowers in the painting. Then I enhance color more so it’s not too pale. I turn the Photoshop layer off and then on again for a comparison look. I’ve already gained more dimension because we have a sense of direction of light. Lets make the inside of the flower at the bottom lighter. This will help the front petals look more forward.

• Accentuate The Shadows
  I want to accentuate dimension even more by making it a little darker and with a touch of violet for color variance under and behind the flowers. This increases the shadows, which helps us have a better sense of the direction of light. I’ll make the buds and stems darker on the left side and also underneath, for their dimensionality and direction of light as well.

• Accent Spots of Color
  I want to accentuate more color into the stems here and there for more form, or roundness. But not everywhere – just a few hinted spots so it doesn’t become busy.
  Once again, I make a before and after comparison to see how the painting is coming together (the wonder of painting by computer!). I’d like the green on the buds and stems to go redder, not quite so green. Then add some highlights to catch the eye more.

At this point I would consider the painting done. But we can showcase the flower more by making adjustments to the background.

• Showcase The Center of Interest
  Since the flowers are our center of interest, we can make them stand out more by adjusting the background behind them. I decided to cool down the background color slightly in a couple of spots to the left of the painting. Then darken the entire background a little. Now the flower stands out more.

• Extra Accents for Final Enhancement
  To make the painting more appealing, I’ll add a warm reflective color beneath the buds and to the left of the stem shadows. Just hints here and there, not all over. That brings more color interest to them (check out Creating Dimension with Core Shadows for more color action).

The flower at the bottom would work better if I curved the petals upward and close it off. This helps it look more like a round, completed flower. I’ll give more of a lighted edge accent on the top of the petals which helps give it more form or dimension.

I’ll add more shadowing underneath the upper right side flower. Then add a shadow side, slightly redder, to the stigma; then brighten its light side to give more roundness.

So now you see how giving more direction of light can improve dimensionality. I’ve chosen to give a sense of luminosity to the upper right flower by putting a slightly warm, light color in its front shadow side (it’s bottom right) to give an appearance of light inside of the flower. Also did the same on the top right edges of the middle and bottom flowers. Here is the before and after.

So keep these tips in mind as you’re working on your paintings. Make sure you determine the direction of where your light is coming from, especially before you bring it to a close. And be consistent with the direction of light on lit surfaces.

You might find Painting with Photoshop On Computer or How to Paint Digitally With Photoshop helpful to learn how some adjustments to my wife’s painting were made.

Now let’s go paint!

We’ll review the importance of a quick lay-in when doing plein air paintings.

Hello all you art lovers out there. Today I’m going to give you an example of how I start some of my plein air pieces. This particular painting was done at Caesar Chavez National Monument.

It represents several of the plein air paintings I actually start. So check out my starting process (watch the video), maybe there’s something you can learn from it. Mainly I want you to focus on how my lay-in is very quick.

I have a tendency to work from back to front with things that are furthest distance then come closer. There are time where as you may have seen on some of my demos, I tend to put the brighter colors in and then the darker colors. For this plein air painting I’m doing the sky first.

I’m going to build up some of the foliage to help give me depth of field as I go. As I lay more information in, I can determine whether I have enough depth or too much depth in some situations. But I start sky, build some foliage in front, lay-in the lighter color greens,

I get the shadowed area on the right hand side then go to the foreground elements to help me begin to build the basic foundation of values that I’m seeing.

That’s how I want to think of it. Laying in roughly, not fine detail, just quick elements so that I can build my plein air painting as I go. Putting the color that I think will help me establish the final colors that will come together eventually.

It will change as I began to fill in more and more of the details. But the basic background, middle ground, foreground elements that’s going to establish what I need as I move into the detail aspects of the plein air  painting.

Here I’m trying to get more of the middle and foreground area colors developed as close to what I’m visually interpreting as possible.

Then putting in the lighter tree foliage now and building the values around it.

When completed you see how roughly layed in this is. You can still see the loose brushstrokes. This is a good foundation for me to carry over. Good loose tree information.

Now I build the middle ground trees in the painting. Putting in additional branches, structure for trees on the left side.

Here is more leafy shapes building over top of the first lay-in. The rocks more detailed.

This is how the final looks.

This is how I would approach my first lay-in and build from there.

I hope you found this helpful. In the future I’ll show you the full plein air painting approach from beginning to completion. But my focus was the lay-in today. Happy painting.

First I begin by drawing a rough outline of the tree stump I’ll be painting. Then I wet the board behind the stump drawing so I can lay my paint in smoothly.  Remember from my other videos/blogs, that you don’t want it to be too wet. As it comes to a low sheen dampness,

then I paint in my light colors and afterwards my medium to darker colors. This back area behind the stump will be grass.

Similarly, I paint in the basic tree bark color, starting with the light areas, then painting in the dark areas. Doing it quickly and roughly allows for variations of tone to be my foundation for the bark as I paint.

I do the same with the top of the tree stump – putting in my lights and a little bit of shadowing tones.

Now use acetate to create extra texture on the tree bark. I’ve shown you this technique in past tutorials (check out Technique for Wall Texture or this one on Ground Texture for a refresher).

Painting some directional strokes and curvature lines help build the details of the tree bark. Adding darker shadow or groove lines help to break up the bark.

I’m returning to the grass area behind the stump, where I painted in my first pass of light and dark colors. As a second pass, I use light value brush strokes in the shadow areas, so that you can see the shape of grass blades. Then I paint in a darker value color into the light areas. (See previous post “Artist Technique Depicting Grass in a Painting.” This simulates grass without having to detail every grass blade).

Refocusing on the tree bark now, I add much darker lines to form bark. More shadows and lines help it stand out from the wood underneath the bark. Building dimension takes a few little lines here and there to create the look I hope to achieve.

Afterward I add some age lines or tree rings on the wood, including cracked wood lines (doing that with the dark shadow colors), building the texture of the bark. Then I come back and paint in lines of light, as if  the light is coming from the left hand side and hitting those edges. I’m able to define more of the textures with light spots.

I always think in steps of one, two, and three: The (1) middle tones, the (2) dark tones, and then those (3) light tones. It’s the simplest way to think of giving form and dimension. 1 – Middle tones, 2 – dark tones, and 3 – light tones! It may not always be in that order. It can be 1 – light tones, 2 – dark tones, and 3 – middle tones. However, the idea of 1, 2, 3 is a simple process to remember.  Even in the shadows or dark area, there is some light. But it’s toned down light to help build information or structure of what you are painting.

On top of the stump I’m painting light where it catches the edge of the cracked wood. This helps it to stand out and gives it more form.

Now to pull out a few more grass blades. These will be the accent lights (accents are what give you the final information to make it look like there is grass).

Below is a close-up of what the final tree bark detailing looks like.

You can give the tree bark more detail and texturing to make it really busy, or you can keep it simpler or cartoony, if you prefer.

What do you think? If you like this, please let me know. Is there something you would like to see me paint? Let me know. Don’t forget to subscribe to my videos on YouTube and check back here for the next blog post. Until next time, happy painting!

I use a badger brush and water from an airbrush, spraying lightly to help blend the strokes better.

Then I put in the back foliage. Think of the process as one, two, three steps: a dark value, middle value and a light value. My back foliage is the dark value that goes in first.

Then my tree trunk and branches over that. I paint the tree trunk in a wet-into-wet method which allows me to blend my colors as I lay on paint. In this situation, paint from the dark, shady areas to the lighter areas.

I’m not dealing with grass or ground in this demo as I’ve shown those techniques in other videos. My focus is strictly on the tree. Once I have the basic shapes, then I build in more details: Adding in darker tones on the tree trunk to give it more form; making lines to depict bark and groves in the trunk. I put lights into random areas of the shadows.

Next, I put in the middle values of the foliage over top of the trunk and branches. It’s helpful to angle the paintbrush in a way that allows you to quickly lay in paint for a leafy appearance without stroking every single leaf shape. We want to simulate a look of lots of foliage. Notice the shape of my paintbrush in the photo below on the right.

We may need to put extra line detailing in the trunk to give more form where needed. As more detail is added and more form appears, we may need to refine those details. In the same manner as the foliage, we want to simulate bark detail without putting too much information.

Now keep in mind that I’m giving you the simple method of approaching this. You can added as much detail as you like or make it as simple as you like.

I then add some reflective or bounce light in the back shadow side of the tree trunk to aid with more volume or roundness. This will give extra color interest to the tree, as well.

To accentuate the foliage, I add the light value leafiness in random spots. Not all over – just a few hotter areas to catch the eye and give dimension and form to the foliage, too.

Now you could add a few twigs or small branches, some in a middle tone, others in lighter tones, to make it look as if these branches are coming forward out of the shadow area of the foliage.

At this point (if you used Gouache or water pliable paint), I go back and spray water from an airbrush and use a badger brush  to soften areas that were too crisp or sharp. We’re creating variables of soft and sharp focus which allows rest points for the eye.

Here’s the finished look. Again, this is the quick, animation method of doing a tree. You can make it as cartoony or as realistic as you like.Next time I’ll do a close up on the bark for a more detailed approach.
I hope that was useful for you! Check out my other Artist Technique series to depict Ground, Grass, or Wall Texture. The technique I share when beginning these paintings are the same:

Depicting Grass in a Painting
Technique for Wall Texture
Technique to Depict Ground Texture

With each simple tutorial, you’ll learn industry tips and techniques to create your own, complete painting. Thank for your interest! Try it out and let me know what you think by leaving a comment below or on my Facebook Page. Be sure to follow along for more and subscribe on YouTube. Until my next video and blog, Happy painting!

Hello art lovers out there! Today we are going to show you a technique on how to depict grass in a painting. There are two methods that I use: one in the studio using an airbrush to soften, the other when painting Plein Air (Painting outdoors in natural light). Hopefully it’s an approach you find useful in your painting as well.

As we have talked about in past blogs and videos, “Artist Technique Depicting Ground Texture” and “Technique for Wall Texture” (check those out if you haven’t already), I like to wet the board first, which allows the paint to go down smooth and even. But it can’t be too wet.

To the left is too wet. Let it dry to a low sheen or dull look which is not reflective as we see here.

This enables us to lay in colors, both light, dark, and medium values, all in one swoop as much as possible.

Why do we want all of the values in at the start? The advantage of doing it this way when painting grass is that it allows you to stroke the dark areas into the light areas to simulate grass blades. So where it’s dark, you stroke up into the light areas; and where it’s light you stroke it up into dark areas. This gives us the sense of grass blades showing up without having to paint every single detail of grass blades.

I’m utilizing an airbrush to keep the surface damp which allows it to be a little softer and not so crisp in the edge. It gives a mood to the overall grass look. Try to mix some of the subtle values that you see and pull blades of grass out of those subtle values into values just above it. You want your color mixing to be as close to the tones of each area as you possibly can. Think of it as shapes of silhouetted grass, light values over a dark value pulling those strokes of one silhouette out on top of another, on top of another and so on. Then put only a few blades of grass inside the silhouette itself.

That builds a look of  a grassy field without overworking it with every single blade being painted.

Now on the right side, I approach it slightly different as if I was doing a Plein air painting. No airbrushing involved here. (Seeing the video will give you a better concept of my stroking action).

I like using older, worn out brushes where the bristles are uneven.

I push against the brush or I’ll use it sideways and push it up. It gives me loose, irregular strokes and broken up areas. You can see where it leaves rough areas of paint that looks like irregular grass in the distance.

That’s the best way to ruin a brush quickly. It’s the reason for using older, worn brushes.

The principles remain the same regarding pushing dark shapes into light shapes and pushing light strokes into darker strokes above it. You can pull a few blades of grass within that shape or silhouette, but not too many because you want it to feel (look) simple and not overworked. That’s the overall concept to get a feel for grass without having to do every single blade. Here’s what the final results look like. A field of grass that’s not overly painted or overly stroked:

Hope you get a sense of how to approach grass in a more simplified fashion. So which method do you like the most? Is it the technique using the airbrush or the straight painting technique of just the brush alone? Whichever…

Hopefully it’ll be a lot of fun when you paint. Try it out and let me know what you think. See you next time!