Tip of the Month - January 2004

This month's tip is all about a promise that I made to some of my students. The last day of the fall classes, we did tree studies. I promised to repeat the process online. We were concerned about painting the whole tree and not the individual parts. The tree was to be a maple.

We started by placing our hand on the paper approximately where we wished the tree to stand. Pencil lines indicate the trunk (1/4 the height of the tree). Additional dots were placed to show the height and breadth of the tree. Masses of leaves were painted in aureolin and cobalt blue. Warm yellow was applied to the trunk and then, the three primaries were mixed to create a warm brown to apply on top of the yellow. At this point, a wash of cool and warm blue were painted into the sky area. Yellow and green were added to the ground.

When the first washes had dried, it was time to add interest into the masses of leaves. Spattering yellow and mixed green onto the foliage and then spraying it with water was one approach.

Using a natural sponge with the chosen colors and manipulating the moist marks with a water-filled brush was a second method.

I continued with these techniques and some additional brushwork. The tree needed a cast shadow on the ground and additional blue was added to the sky. The colors for this exercise were: aureolin, permanent rose, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, and ultramarine blue.

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