Would you like to improve the landscape elements in your illustrations? Join me for this quick "how-to" workout to practice a step-by-step process for painting an elm tree in watercolor!
Watercolor is a great medium for quickly capturing accurate form, evocative color and lighting effects. Grab your painting materials and let’s get started!
You'll need a few simple supplies to follow along with me. Here's a materials list (along with links if you'd like to buy them online).
Paper:
Cold press means the paper has a medium texture - not too smooth and not too rough. 90lb is a fairly thin watercolor paper. I use it because it will go through a photocopier, which is often useful if I need to quickly transfer a line drawing onto my paper before painting. (In this exercise we’ll be blocking out our drawing directly on the paper though, so a thicker paper like 140lb would work great too).
Paints:
I’m using Windsor and Newton professional artists colors. For this painting I’m using a fairly limited palette of just 6 colors. The first three are primary colors (yellow, red and blue) that mix well together. The last three colors are extras that are useful for occasionally accenting and/or darkening mixtures as needed.
- Yellow Ochre - a warm, earthy yellow.
- Permanent Alizarin Crimson - a slightly purplish red.
- French Ultramarine - a deep, intense blue.
- Permanent Sap Green - a strong, slightly olive green.
- Antwerp Blue - a bright, smooth blue that goes down with a minimum of graininess.
- Neutral Tint - a beautiful grey that mixes well with all the other colors to reduce the value and saturation of a mixture when I want to achieve a really dark color.
I like to use tube colors because they make it easy to mix up a large enough quantity of paint for my bigger wet-on-wet washes. (You could do this painting workout with dry pan watercolors too, but you'll just need to spend a bit more time mixing up your paints).
You can buy the watercolors in individual tubes (the small 5ml ones last a long time - the colors I've highlighted are the individual tube colors I could find available online at Amazon), or Windsor and Newton makes a great set available for purchase online with all these colors or pretty close equivalents that should work just fine:
Brush:
A high quality watercolor brush is critical. A good brush will hold a substantial amount of paint which allows you to block in shapes quickly and will also come to a sharp point when it’s wet to allow you to paint small details. For this painting, I’m using just a single “round” shaped sable watercolor brush by Princeton. The size I’m using is a #12.
Watercolor Mixing Palette:
I like to use a palette with separate small wells on the left for squeezing out a pea-sized bit of paint straight from each of my tubes (a little bit goes a long way). My palette also has larger wells on the right. I put a tiny splash of water in each of the larger wells and use them to mix the colors to be used in the actual washes on my painting.
I'm using a small plastic palette in the video. I also like to use this slightly larger plastic watercolor mixing palette made by Jack Richeson.
I like to use a palette with separate small wells on the left for squeezing out a pea-sized bit of paint straight from each of my tubes (a little bit goes a long way). My palette also has larger wells on the right. I put a tiny splash of water in each of the larger wells and use them to mix the colors to be used in the actual washes on my painting.
I'm using a small plastic palette in the video. I also like to use this slightly larger plastic watercolor mixing palette made by Jack Richeson.
Water Cup:
You’ll need a container to hold water for mixing your paints and cleaning your brushes. (Be sure to use a container that you won't be drinking from - some watercolor paints can contain ingredients that are toxic to ingest).
Paper Towels:
These are useful for dabbing off extra paint from the brush if you’ve picked up more than you intended (and also great for cleaning up)! Any brand will do.
The book I'm referencing in this workout is:
How to Draw Trees (by Frank M. Rines)
This brief, wonderfully condensed book discusses key form and compositional aspects of many species of trees from an artistic viewpoint.
It also breaks down a great sequence for rendering trees from the initial block-in, through more detailed attention to silhouettes, to planning of shades and shadows, and then steps for finalizing the illustration.
It's a great resource for any artist interested in capturing the specific character of various species of trees.
This brief, wonderfully condensed book discusses key form and compositional aspects of many species of trees from an artistic viewpoint.
It also breaks down a great sequence for rendering trees from the initial block-in, through more detailed attention to silhouettes, to planning of shades and shadows, and then steps for finalizing the illustration.
It's a great resource for any artist interested in capturing the specific character of various species of trees.
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