Sunshine ‘n Snow

Tutorial

“Spring Thaw” is a tutorial aimed at focusing on some of the techniques used in painting evergreen trees and mountains.  Springtime in the Colorado Rockies is a truly beautiful time of the year and following a trip through Colorado in April I was certainly motivated to try and capture some of that.

One of the things I wanted to achieve in this painting was to illustrate that mountains and trees don’t have to be painted exactly the way they look in order to “look” like mountains and trees.

One of the things I carry around with me is a bamboo tool that comes to a point.  It is hollow and looks similar to a fountain pen only the nib (the point)  isn’t metal.  They are available at most art supply stores and are perfect for applying liquid mask to areas that need to be thin.

I like to use Drawing Gum, available from CheapJoes.com as masking fluid because I like the color of it.  It’s darker thank most brands, making it easy to see.

The bush areas behind the tree on the left should be masked in to protect the white areas.  We’ll add a few randomly placed branches behind the 2 trees on the right to add some interest to the painting.

I’ve used cobalt turquoise to paint the first layer on the trees.  Paint the crevice areas that don’t  have light directly hitting them a darker tonal value than the branches that are being hit by the sunlight.

In reality, we don’t find blue mountains like this—the fact that the shape is true makes them believable—that they are somewhat snow covered would suggest that it would be spring. 

When painting nature, there are things that we should consider with respect to the composition:

· There should be a foreground, mid-ground, and background area

· It is important when placing the focal point that we remember the rule of thirds.   If we evenly divide the paper into 9 squares  -  (3 across and 3 down), the focal point should not be in the middle square.   I’ve chosen the lone evergreen tree on the left to be the focal point of this painting so have strategically placed it in the painting to the left.  I have also in one of the areas of highest contrast

· The horizon should not be placed in the middle of your painting and this tends to cut the painting in half.  Again, I’ve considered the “Rule of Thirds” and the forefront horizon falls on the lower third, while the distant mountains falls on the upper third.

· The colors I chose to work with, blue and gold, were chosen because they are complimentary to each other.

When looking at the this reference photo, you’ll see 3 things that were accomplished:

· The mountains were painted.  I very lightly drew where I wanted them to be first and then painted them with cobalt blue, leaving some areas white to suggest that the snow has not completely melted off them yet.  Don’t over paint the mountains as they are in the background and we don’t want a lot of detail in them.

· While the mountains were drying, I painted more detail into the evergreen trees.  I used cobalt blue and layered it into the crevice areas, placing it behind light covered branches so that the branches pop.  Indigo was used for a 3rd application of color in the very dark areas underneath the branches.

· The sky was laid in using a wet wash of quacridrone gold and permanent rose.  I painted the area directly overhead (the top of the painting)  darker as this is normally how it appears in nature.

I started with a simple line drawing of the evergreen trees.  It helps to draw this if you can forget for just a moment what it is you are drawing, and instead focus on placing long shapes (none of which should be the same) over top of each other in such a way that they don’t exactly overlap.  Underneath shapes should be placed to the right and the left of the shape directly above it.  Think of it as drawing a pyramid that you’ve added some detail to and don’t get hung up on your drawing looking exactly like mine does.

The only thing left to do now is to lift the liquid mask off the areas you protected and sign your painting.  My initial thought was that I would paint the left hand side that was protected a different color, but once I lifted the mask off, I rather liked it white so decided less indeed WAS best :)

Happy Painting ……

                                               Joy

Before lifting the masking fluid, paint the dark bush areas with sepia, or a very dark green color.  This is the darkest area of your painting and to ensure a good balance of the lightest lights, and darkest darks, we want this to be dark.  I chose to silhouette a tall spruce tree at the top of the hill, placing it behind the lone evergreen.  Again, with the dark indigo, less is best—you don’t need a lot of it and it is important to not overwork.

Quinacridone gold was used in the foreground as well.  I’ve left some white areas here too, hoping that they would suggest snow patched areas.  Let your painting dry.

Ultramarine violet could be used to create some shadow areas under the trees.  I used it also to add some color to the mountains.  A very faint hill is painted on the left hand side allowing the mountains to fade into the background.