Painters Online Logo

Login/register

01778 395174

Painting sky holes in trees

Welcome to the forum.

Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.

Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.

Hang on Studio Wall
Showing page 1 of 2
Author
Message

Keith Orange

  • Forum Member +
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 238
Posted
It was hot yesterday so I took a pochade box and oils with me and did three quick sketches of trees in the landscape. Something I rarely get right is painting the little gaps in the foliage (sky holes) through which the sky is visible. What's the best way of doing them?

Peter Davison

  • Forum Expert
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 533
Posted
I usually just dab small amounts of sky colour in the foliage and it seems to work.

Meli aya

  • Forum Member +
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 104
Posted
can we see the sketches keora?
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20301
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7124
Posted
Looking out of the window at the moment, at a stand of sycamores in full leaf, I'm not actually seeing any sky-holes other than right at the top. But it's hard to achieve a convincing tree in a painting without a bit of space/sky to break up the shape: you tend to end up with lollipops rather than trees. I hadn't thought how I get the sky-holes - it's sort of automatic after all these years ... I'm not sure there is a single technique that always works. I've seen Stub's reply of course, and yes that can work - but I can't help thinking of a painting I've seen very recently (tactfully refraining from mentioning where) in which I thought that approach wasn't working at all: the sky-holes were thickly painted, with the consequence that they just jumped out of the tree like bright blue leaves. How you do it will depend on so many things, but it's useful to bear in mind that the sky-hole in foliage tends to be a tone lower than that of the sky - if you want to avoid the blue-light-hanging-among-the-leaves effect. I think the way I tend to do it is establish the broad bones of the tree - find the trunk, indicate rudimentary but accurate limbs, then put their clothes on, adding fiddly bits later. I would also tend to paint the tree over the sky colour - certainly not by pushing a great blob of tree-green onto the board and then cutting into it. I suspect though that the real answer doesn't lie so much in finding special techniques for painting different things, but in practising drawing and painting until you don't have to think about individual techniques at all.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20301
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7124
Posted
http://www.painters-online.co.uk/gallery/art-view,picture_224875.htm Here's a good indication of how to deal with sky-holes, posted today. It's a watercolour but the same principles apply.

D Hillman

  • Forum Expert
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 302
Posted
Not that it is my area of expertise but one of those painterly type guru's with a youtube channel was saying that each different species of tree has its own typical holes (I think he described them as bird holes, holes that birds could fly through) he chastised one of his students for how they had done theirs and when he looked found that it was absolutely correct to the tree type showing that there are no hard and fast rules. I think he did say that the sky should always be painted darker through these holes than outside... but it was a while since I watched that one...
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20301
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7124
Posted
"Spine Milligna, the well-know typing error" - he always viewed the world at a slant, Gawd bless 'im. The Sylvia method works particularly well with watercolour, because it's hard to paint leaves over branches without them bleeding through: which sometimes works OK, but often doesn't. Typical, bright, clean watercolour from Sylv: and not afraid of mixing a bit of paint with the water either: the besetting sin of watercolourists is to forget the actual colour... You can certainly use this method in oils and acrylics, and many do. Just another way to swing a cat.... as for the shapes in individual trees, I think David's guru was probably about right ... much will depend upon the way the boughs leave the trunk, the way the tree carries its foliage, and of course the size of individual leaves: looking at those sycamores again, the leaf platforms make faces .... I can see Animal, from the Muppet Show, at the moment...... Possibly I should take a bit more tonic with the gin, mind....

Keith Orange

  • Forum Member +
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 238
Posted
Here's the picture, it took me about an hour, painting in the shade. Any longer and the sun would have started shining on the painting, which makes it harder to judge tones. I think small sky holes look more convincing that big ones, so perhaps you need artist's licence to adjust the actual size to something smaller. And I'm still not sure if the sky in sky holes should look paler or darker than the sky itself.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20301
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7124
Posted
But there is - not always, not necessarily, but for two reasons: one atmospheric, which gives the impression that the tone is darker - the other that there are usually tiny twigs, buds and leaves there which you can't see as discrete objects but which are there, and screen the sky colour to greater or lesser extent. In your painting above, no - because you have plenty of space between the branches and anyway your sky is bright and strong. In a more subdued sky, typical of this country, all sorts of optical effects occur. The danger with painting the sky the same colour exactly - and it's a fairly minor difference we're talking about, just a tone or semi-tone - is that the contrast between it and the foliage is too great, and you can end up with those blue leaves. This isn't the case of course if you have a very bright sky, or sunlight, shining directly through the tree, but then in that case you'd be painting the foliage darker against the light, except for the bits at the very edge which are caught by it. And I bet you do this instinctively, in reality. Depends how 'accurate' you want to be, all the same: this is all subtle stuff, and matters of degree, not of enormous difference. If it looks right, it probably is.

jeff stokes

  • New Member
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 6
Posted
Best way is just to study some trees, but no two look the same
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20301
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7124
Posted
Yup. Always go out and look.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20301
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7124
Posted
Yes - it's hard to generalize, but a close look at some paintings suggests that people haven't grasped entirely that the background sky isn't just a uniform patch of, as it might be, blue - it's a long way away to start with, and atmospheric effects are altered by whatever stands in the way of them. One might of course wish to exaggerate this effect, and conditions obviously vary - but on the whole, this approach holds good.
Showing page 1 of 2