2 Things to Remember When Painting Trees
Jan 15, 2011 Painting
First of all, let’s look at what trees are not. Trees are not green lollipops, they’re not solid, and they’re not all the same!
When painting trees, it’s important to keep two things in mind: simplification and specification.
Okay, they sound like complete opposites, and in some ways they are, but they are both essential when it comes to painting trees!
Specification
Imagine a pine tree…
What picture appeared in your head? The standard image of a symmetric cone with pointy branches? Is that really what a pine tree looks like?
Each species of tree is different. The size and shape of the trunk, the direction of the branches, the leaves, the overall shape. These details are what will make your tree look believable. Whether you’re going for a realistic style or a more expressive or impressionistic style, you want your tree to look distinct.
When painting a tree, find a reference image to work from. Let this image be your inspiration for the tree’s essence. Remember that you don’t need to copy, you just need to pick out the little things that make that tree an individual.
Another thing to remember that even within a species, each tree is different. Maybe one branches sticks out at a funny angle, maybe the tree is fuller on one side or maybe it has a crooked trunk. It’s all in the details!
And speaking of details…
Simplification
You don’t need to paint every little leaf or twig. This is where your editing skills come into play. Mother nature is incredibly complex and it can be overwhelming to try and capture everything you see. The good news is that you don’t have to!
When we look at a tree to paint it, suddenly we notice all the little details that we’ve never seen before. When we look at a tree casually, we take all this in without focusing on it. This is what you need to accomplish in your painting. Capture the suggestion of the fullness of the tree without painting every single branch.
Squinting slightly at your reference can help eliminate some of the details and let you focus on pattern, texture and values, as well as the overall shape and movement of the tree.
As you can see, it’s a bit of a balance between capturing the details that define the tree while simplifying it enough to paint it. The best way to learn this technique is practice. Make sure you check out my tutorial on how to paint trees in acrylics!
Bonus Tip
Trees are not solid! Your tree should look like a bird could fly through it. Make sure some of the background can be seen through the leaves.
Good luck!
Tags: acrylic painting, oil painting, paint trees, painting tips
Identifying Lights and Darks in your Paintings
Oct 27, 2010 Drawing, Painting
In response to a question from Delhi, here is a break down on how to identify the shadows and highlights in your paintings (or drawings).
Using the reference from my underpainting tutorial, I will demonstrate where the light and dark areas are. Here, I have blurred the picture slightly to simulate squinting your eyes. Squinting your eyes is a great way to eliminate a lot of distracting details and really focus on the large shapes.
When I look for lights and darks, I’m not looking at the objects in my composition. I’m looking for the values. Here you can see that I’ve outlined all of the shadow shapes in blue. I’ve outlined the shadows area of the cup as part of the background, because they are the same value. Value, lightness or darkness, has nothing to do with hue or colour.
By squinting my eyes, these are the areas that stand out as being the darkest.
Here I have outlined the highlights in orange. The highlights are any area of the composition that are pure white. This is where the light hits the objects directly. When I squint, the highlights are the areas that are much lighter than the rest of the picture.
You will also notice that I’ve circled the folds in the fabric. Although my reference doesn’t show this as a highlight, when I paint, I will include it as one. This is an example of the kind of artistic licence that lets you make changes to what you are painting. The fabric just happens to be a type that doesn’t reflect light, but it would benefit the overall composition to have some highlights in the bottom portion of the frame. If the fabric was shinier, this is where the highlights would occur.
Everything between the highlights and shadows are varying shades. The keyword there is varying. It’s not enough to have highlights, shadows, and one value in the middle. You need to create light mid tones and dark mid tones and provide a transition from the lights to the darks.
To further simplify things, you can convert your reference to grayscale. This eliminates the colour factor, which can be misleading when trying to identify shadows and highlights. Obviously this isn’t always an option, so don’t rely on it too much, but it’s a great way to begin to understand values.
As a bit of an aside, this is also a good test for your paintings. To figure out if your paintings have enough contrast (range of values), convert it to grayscale and compare with a gray scale image of your reference. You will quickly be able to see where you painting needs to be darker or lighter.
Tags: acrylic painting, drawing tips, highlights, oil painting, shadows
How to Start a Painting
Oct 20, 2010 Creativity, Painting
I recently began teaching a beginner’s painting class. I started with the intention of teaching the very basics, colour theory, colour mixing, etc. After demonstrating some techniques, I had my students get started on a painting to practice their new skills.
I soon realized my mistake! Most people didn’t know where to start.
Starting a painting is a lot less daunting than it looks. The most important thing to remember is to start general and get more specific; don’t rush into the details!
To start a painting, I use a monochromatic under painting. This is a thin wash that blocks out the major shapes and values. I would recommend using a neutral colour like sienna or umber.
Here I am working with a simple still life composition with a single light source. This gives me a good range of values to paint.
Using a pencil, I draw the simplest and most basic shapes that I see in my reference.
Next, I use a wide, flat brush to apply paint to only the darkest areas. I’m looking for the parts of my image that are in dark shadow. I am using burnt sienna, slightly watered to create a bit of a wash. At this point, I’m not paying too much attention to the particulars of the fabric or the squash. You might find it helpful to squint at your reference to identify the large areas of shadow.
Now I’ve added some more water to my wash to thin it out even more and make it lighter. Still using a wide, flat brush, I can start to block in the midtones. Here I am looking for everything that isn’t a highlight. At this point, you are ready to apply colour.
This is my basic under painting. It identifies the shapes in my composition and provides me a map of the shadows, midtones and highlights. It provides the foundation for your painting, onto which you can apply colour. It is also intentionally simple. One of the biggest mistakes a new painter can make is trying to get too detailed too quickly.
Always start a painting with a large brush, which will help curb any temptation to do detailed work. A rule of thumb is to use one size bigger a brush than you think you need. As you progress through the painting, you can switch to smaller brushes.
Starting with a monochromatic underpainting is a great way to get past that first step of getting paint on the canvas. Often, the first brushstroke is the hardest.
In Summary:
- use a large, flat brush
- do an under painting
- use a neutral wash
- block in the basic shapes
- look for shadows, midtones and highlights
Is Your Painting Finished? 5 Questions to Ask Yourself
Sep 29, 2010 Drawing
How do you know when your painting is finished? With some pieces you just know, but with others you need to make a conscious decision to stop. It can be difficult to figure out when your painting is finished. You often don’t know it was done until you go too far and realized you should have stopped ten minutes earlier!
Here are some questions to ask yourself to help determine if your painting is finished.
1. Is there enough contrast?
A fully realized painting should reflect a full range of contrast between values (light and dark) and hues (vibrant and unsaturated). When looking at values, it can be helpful to squint your eyes. This highlights the contrast between the lightest and darkest areas of your painting. You can also take a picture of your painting and digitally make it a gray-scale image. This gives you the best indication of the range of values. With not enough contrast in value, your painting will appear gray and flat.
Paintings should also have a mix of hue intensity; the brightness of colours. If you’ve used all of your colours straight out of the tube, you may want to think about toning some areas down by tinting the paint with white or a complimentary colour. This will only make the neighbouring hues look that much brighter!
2. Is your subject matter appropriately rendered?
I tried to word this in a way that could apply to any painting, regardless of subject matter. What I mean is, have you executed your painting in a way that reflects your style and aspirations? If you’re going for a realistic style, are there any areas that are clumsy or need more work? If you’re going for a loose, expressive style, are there areas that have become too tightly overworked? Don’t get lazy with what you’re painting and don’t make excuses.
3. Does the composition make sense?
Composition is the arrangement of the formal elements of your painting on the canvas. It can play a big part in the feeling of your piece. Have you considered the way the parts of your painting interact with each other? Even if you do thumbnail sketches, you may need to make changes to a painting’s composition. For example, when the subject matter gets too close to the edge of the canvas, it can create tension. If this isn’t intentional, it can take away from the effect of the painting.
4. Does it convey the right message?
You need to know what it is you’re trying to get across in your work and make sure your painting reflects that. Sometimes this can be hard to figure out all by yourself. A good way to answer this question is to get other people to look at your work. Other people will react to only what they see and feel in your work, not the ideas that are in your head. If you find that people are responding to something you didn’t intend, you may want to re-consider your approach.
5. Could you live with it?
Would you be happy hanging your painting in your house? Try it! Live with it on your wall for a few days. This is a really good way to get a new perspective on your piece. If there was an area bugging you, you may find that you suddenly know how to fix it.
Some paintings come together with almost an audible click. You step back and it’s finished. Others are a struggle every step of the way. With these pieces, it’s incredibly important that you be critical and evaluate each element of the painting, asking yourself what it brings to the piece. If you don’t feel that sense of completion, don’t panic! Turn on your critical, analytical side and evaluate the painting to determine if it’s finished.
How do you know when a painting is finished?
Disclaimer: Of course, the answers to these questions greatly depend on the style of painting you are doing. While it’s my opinion that most successful paintings have a full range of values, not every painting needs it. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve with your work. Whatever you’re going for, these questions reflect some of the things you should consider along the way.
Tags: acrylic painting, art tips, Creativity, oil painting
Planning a Painting – The Value Study
Jul 25, 2010 Painting
So, you have a great idea for a painting. You’ve done some thumbnail sketches and created an interesting, dynamic composition. You know exactly what you want to paint…
Time to jump in? Not quite!
Before you dive into the real thing, it can be extremely helpful to do a value study: a smaller, monochromatic version of your painting.
A value study strips your painting of all colour, letting you work with the lights and darks, which is just as important to your composition as form. This is also your chance to make sure you have a range of lights and darks to create good contrast. If your painting isn’t interesting at this stage, it won’t be interesting when you add colour! Stan Prokopenko does a great job of explaining how a value study can help you create an interesting composition.
Also check out this post where Stapleton Kearns critiques a painting where the artist has confused colour with value. According to Kearns, “Value is more important than color, as it is a part of drawing. Color is a decoration you hang on your drawing.”
If we digitally altered the painting on Kearns’ blog to make it greyscale, we would see a very dark, very flat painting. That’s a hint!
Doing a value study can help you solve these problems before you get to them in your final painting. It’s easier to match the value (not the intensity) of your colour to the study than it is to figure it out on the fly. The intensity of the hue can be very distracting.
When I did my African Sunset painting, I knew that getting the values right was going to be essential in making the sun look like it was shining. Doing a quick value study (above) helped me see just how dark the sky needed to be to make the sun look bright in contrast. This kept me from wasting time and paint on painting a too-light sky. Below is the completed painting converted to greyscale.
If you’re having troubles with the values within a painting, taking a digital picture and converting it to greyscale can really help. This lets you see the lights and darks without that distracting colour. A bright or intense colour doesn’t always make for a dark value. Solve these problems in a value study and you will have a much easier time with your painting!
Tags: acrylic painting, oil painting, paintings, value study
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