I feel like I was precipitate in posting Photo to Painting: October Trees, since I ended up painting more trees from photos at the end of October! So here’s another post.
School Tree
This one’s not exactly a “photo to painting”: I painted the tree from life, through the window. I am including it mainly because I do not like it very much and I think it sets up a progress arc when compared to trees I painted only a few days later.
Why I wanted to paint this scene: The vibrant color of the remaining leaves on the bottom of the tree! It was truly stunning in person that day.
What I like about the painting: Bold color.
What I don’t like about the painting: Pretty much everything else. I think it looks messy, especially up close. It lacks value range so the colors seem to clash. It also looks flat and two-dimensional because the color variations don’t map to depth or shape.
Color notes: This is actually a test of using Opera Rose as the red in the leaf mix, which did indeed create vibrant oranges. (I used the Opus art store version, which is the same as DV Opus.) However, I found that (in addition to the obvious downside of being fugitive), this paint had a tendency to create awkward cauliflowers. I was able to get similar bold scarlet and orange hues without the downsides from Quin Coral, so I ended up rejecting Opus as a potential color for my Autumn Palette.
Rural Autumn Glow
Why I wanted to paint this scene: I loved the way the clouds burned coral at sunset, and the cheerful shape of the spruce tree.
What I wanted to edit about the photo: This is definitely one where the reference photo was snapped to remember something specific and in many ways does not resemble the final product. Zoom way in on the horizon, and you’ll see the clouds and tree that inspired me to paint. Although these aspects of the photo seem tiny, in real life they felt large and majestic.
At the last moment, I decided also to incorporate glowing red horizon foliage into the painting, a la Jeremy Miranda, even though they are not captured in this snapshot – actually, it was a phenomenon that happened more earlier in the month, but it’s a bit too late by late October. Still, it feels true to the general idea of autumn in rural Mass.
What I like about the painting: The clouds wound up having a dimensionality and color and softness to them that I really like. The shape of the tree is roughly right. The color of the foliage burns.
What could be improved about the painting: Because I made a game-time decision about the trees, I wound up with some hard edges that could have been avoided with better planning. I also would have liked to put car headlights but it was too late by the time I decided to put the road. There is a weird bit on the top of the sky from where the cheap masking tape I was using repelled the paint. Better water control could have helped.
Church Tree
Why I wanted to paint this scene: The tree immediately struck me as being composed of distinct shapes. Not every tree looks like that, and it felt like it would be a good tree to practice the method of painting trees as shapes.
What I wanted to edit about the photo: The tree is awkwardly positioned in front of other trees in a way that is confusing. I wanted to simplify the background and focus on the foreground tree. The photo also doesn’t do justice to how glowingly yellow the tree looked to me in person.
What I like about the painting: I really feel my foliage painting snapped together in this moment and I took a leap forward compared to my previous paintings this month. I already liked the painting after the first layer because it demonstrated distinct shapes and light direction in a way my foliage paintings have previously not. But my best decision was deciding that it was not done at that point, and adding another dry layer of extra scumbling/texture to emulate the shadows of individual leaves.
Color notes: I used Hansa Yellow Medium, Hansa Yellow Deep, Gold Ochre, and Transparent Red Oxide for the leaves, with a bit of Ultramarine where I needed to neutralize shadows. The background dull green is a mix of Gold Ochre and Prussian Blue, with a touch of Perylene Red for extra dulling. The sky also contains Ultramarine and Prussian Blue. Mixes of all these colors were used to create the dry grass and shadows on the ground.
October Morning, Town Center Park
Why I wanted to paint this scene: Peaceful feeling; contrast of the misty treeline in the background with the sunlit trees and shrubs in the foreground; brightness of the red shrub.
What I wanted to edit about the photo: Not much! I took the composition basically as is.
What I like about the painting: I think I did a decent job capturing the feeling of the original and being fairly faithful.
What could be improved about the painting: I think that I wanted to emphasize some of the elements that I liked (e.g. the mistiness of the trees and the redness of the bush), but I’m not sure I really did. I think this is an example where I got too caught up in copying the photo. Still, I like the finished product, so I’m not too mad about it.
Conclusion
Considering that I really did not like “School Tree” and very much preferred “Church Tree,” here is my summary of lessons about how to paint a good deciduous tree:
- Choose a tree with distinct foliage shapes and/or emphasize existing shapes.
- Do multiple layers – a background layer for basic shapes and a foreground layer for shadows and details.
- Include boughs at various distances to emphasize three dimensions. Use muted colors and less detail for background boughs.
- Contrast bright colors in the lit portions of the tree with muted and dark shadow portions and background. If everything’s bright, nothing is.
- If it looks unfinished, maybe it’s unfinished!