Play with colors to paint realistic trees.
Painting trees is not as simple as using brown for the trunk and green for the leaves. Trees have a greater variety of color than most people realize, and many paintings of trees do not actually use any green or brown colors at all. A wide mix of colors, including black, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, brown and white all mix together to create realistic-looking trees. Since lighting plays a large part in painting, the key is to give the illusion of a tree rather than the actual presentation of one. This will create a more realistic color for the tree.
Instructions
1. Look at a tree or a photo of a tree. Use a pencil to mark out simple shapes in the tree, such as triangles, circles, squares or ovals. Use this as a guide when painting your own tree.
2. Inspect the shapes of the space between the tree branches. Most trees have a wide variety in the amount of negative space between the branches, which is important to copy for a realistic tree.
3. Inspect the tree for color variations. Identify which colors are mid-range colors, which are highlights and which are shadows.
4. Start painting the tree with the mid-range colors. Apply the color using the pattern you identified from Step 1.
5. Use the background color to modify the shapes if necessary, to make the tree look realistic. Allow the paint to dry for 20 minutes.
6. Apply the shadow colors. Apply the colors in the same area that they are present in the photo. Only use the colors you identified from the photo. If your tree is featured a night picture, you will likely use black, purples and blues, but no green. Fall trees use tones of brown, yellow, orange and red.
7. Make any small detail changes after the painting dries.
