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Help with trees please
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Posted
If you want to you can have a look at a number of videos I have collected over the last few years. Please type the word tree in the search box and you will get a list of them.
https://landscapeartblog.wordpress.com/
Posted
Winter trees - if in doubt, add more branches and twigs, not forgetting that most trees have greens in the boughs, and ivy distorting the shape. Don't look so much at individual features: look for the shape as if it were a silhouette, and gradually cut into that and refine it.
Summer and Spring trees - look for the shapes made by the leaf platforms; feather the edges against the sky, ie paint sky into them and vice versa. Make a few holes in the foliage, or build the foliage around them: in fact, whatever the conventional wisdom might be, there AREN'T always "holes for the birds to fly through": birds are quite capable of flying through leaves .... it will improve the look of an oak tree if you include them, but not necessarily a sycamore, which can present a very full head of leaf if it's healthy. First identity the tree, get to know the generic shape of each species: don't have a standard tree, as if they were all the same (as devotees of one popular tutor tend to do). Remember that branches grow from all sides, not just left and right as you're looking at them, and that they cross over.
If you don't go out and look at trees, you'll never be able to paint them convincingly: you'll always get a template tree, a standard which is supposed to represent all of them,and it'll never look like an actual, growing tree. And remember that trunks of trees can be grey, brownish, green, even yellow: don't just reach for the burnt umber or vandyke brown - and certainly not the black.
Posted
I usually put in the trunk and branches very loosely then using an old splayed brush I would dab the brush into a my mixed up paint. Dab it again several times to make sure it is not too loaded then go onto where I want leave to be and continue dabbing the canvas. The looser the technique and application the better. I also prefer to let the colours mix on the canvas, that way they colours are more brighter.
Nkoli
My Art: Art That Strives To Heal
My Blog: Love of Painting
Posted
Stylized trees, maybe? I enjoy Bellamy's paintings, and think the way he paints trees is part of his overall 'handwriting' - I see what Syd and Michael mean, though. I don't know if Bellamy uses the fan brush - it will give you a ready-made shape, depending on its size, and you can paint an awful lot of trees in a landscape by just employing it: which is actually why I don't, because they do then all look the same. But it's the overall result that matters - and all painting is illusion after all; we can't replicate reality (and no one would thank us if we tried to - we'd get accused of being too photographic).
I do use the fan, but prefer a flat when painting trees even though that presents problems of its own. Still - until I have David Bellamy's sales, I think I'll go easy on the criticism........