Creating Tree Trunks to Bring the Trees to Life
Bill makes this forest come alive by attaching the trees to the earth.
Key Points To Consider:
- Bill is painting on a wet canvas.
- He mixes the color he wants on the palette before he goes to the canvas.
- Bill recognized immediately that he had too much red in his mixture. Rather than leaving the red in his mixture he took most of it away and moved it to another part of the palette. He could have adjusted the color by adding more green and blue, however, he would have ended up with a big pile of paint.
- Remember when you are adding dark colors to light colors, use very little paint. Our pigment is so strong that it takes very little to change your color. Dark will always over-power the light color.
- The paint on Bill’s Palette Knife is thick. as he lays it on the canvas, he goes to the areas where the paint is thin. The canvas pulls the paint off of the knife. As he moves around the canvas, he picks up colors. It is all harmonized so it doesn’t matter. This gives variety to the colors of the tree trunks.
- He was strategic in placing the tree trunks. Where he wanted them to stand out, he used more paint. Some minor trunks he created by plowing through the paint already on the canvas.
- When he created the reflections in the water he applied just a small amount of paint. Then he used a clean, dry Blending Brush to pull the paint straight down to soften the reflection.
It was always a delight to watch Bill paint in person. For those of you who didn’t know him, he was the same on the camera and off. You truly are getting the “real Bill” here.
Happy Tree-TrunkPainting!
Laurie and Dawn
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