Watercolours: Lonely Pine Trees

In today's blog I show you how to quickly and effortlessly paint some pine trees. I also do a colour wash for the background and show you how to select particular brushes for particular tasks. The medium we are working in is watercolours.

Start with a medium sized round brush and wet your whole background with water.

Wash the top 2/3 of the page with blue paint, and the bottom third with brown. Do not worry about the leaking that takes place on the horizon.

Stand a small round brush on its head and hold it on its furthest end between your fingers, so that you have very little control over the brush. Draw wriggly trees in brown paint. They should end more or less on the same height, but their roots should be at different levels. I used the same brush to sign my name.

Now use a small fan brush and dip it in green paint. Touch the tip of the brush lightly to the page and paint the pine trees in a triangular shape. Simply touch and lift.

Your painting should look more or less like this by now.

Switch back to the medium round brush and add shadows and detail to the ground. Remember to paint the shadows under the trees, or they will appear to be floating.

Switch to your small round brush and stand it on its tip to paint a couple of birds in the air to make the rather boring painting a little more interesting.

The finished painting.

You can watch a compilation video of the above steps on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/Z8oS1SF3CHU

Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy my books here:
You can purchase Designs By Miekie 1 here.
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