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Painting Winter Landscapes

As always the texts by Edgar Payne and John Carlson should be consulted. But here are some notes on technique, particularly on painting trees.

Leprechaun Hill 10 x 20 Oil

1. The painting above shows trees at the intermediate distance. The trees, as the texts indicate, are denser at the bottom and middle and become less distinct at the edges where they meet the sky or other background. As Bill Fletcher and others teach so well, begin by blocking in the canvas with 3-5 large shapes, in this case, sky, trees and snow/ground. Paint thinly so it dries quickly. Identify and paint in the values/colors of the shadow and light side of the trees. The painting above is an overcast day with some shadow directly under the trees only.

Mix 2-3 colors on your palette: start with the darkest value in the trees, then mix more and more sky color into each batch until you are one value step from the sky color itself, so you have a even gradation of values – sky to darkest tree color.

From photos or on-site, decide whether the trees are so dense that their trunks and foliage merge (as shown above) or the trunks are sparse, you can see snow/ground through them easily. In this latter case, the most dense part of the tree, and therefore the paint, is the upper foliage. You can them paint individual tree trunks and lower branches, then paint the upper branches with large swipes of the brush.

Load your brush with sky color and drag the brush from the sky a little bit into the tree shape. Clean the brush and use the next darker value and drag this from where you just painted into the darker tree shape. Continue until you have a gradation. If you can’t get it the first time, wipe off and try again.

Leprechaun Hill (Detail)

Remember to preserve the shadow and light sides of the trees. Lastly, paint in sky holes using the rule of “the smaller the sky hole the darker it will be”.

2. You can paint sparse trees in the middle distance by painting the trunk and stubby larger branches, then use a dry brush (no thinner or medium) with tree color and drag it sideways (perpendicular to the direction of the branches). It helps to let the underpainted sky dry a day or so before doing this. See below.

New Year’s Day(Study) 8x10 Oil

3. When painting trees close up, you can combine painting individual branches with the above technique; just remember that as branches get thinner, they get lighter, until they merge into the sky. The underside of branches will be darker than the top sides, which means branches coming toward you will be darker than branches leaning away from you.

4. Sky color in our locale tends toward Cobalt Blue in Winter and Ultramarine Blue in summer. The temptation is to paint the sky too light when there is snow on the ground.

5. On-site, take your time in observing, and in taking reference photos, both close-up and wide-angle, and notice all the subtle color in the (dry) trees, grasses and plants. Take close-ups of foliage so you remember the shapes and sizes of seed-pods, etc.

6. Some artists to learn from in this area are Marcus Bohne, Marc Hanson, Stephan Datz, Dan Young, and Russell Chatham. Look for their web sites.