 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm happy to announce it's three month in Monet Cafe. Join me this month for some great lessons on learning how to paint trees. If you haven't subscribed yet, I hope you will. You're gonna learn a lot. We're gonna have a lot of fun. And if you would like to support me on Patreon, that would be great. It keeps these free tutorials coming on Monet Cafe. Hello and welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm very excited to bring you the theme for this month here on the Monet Cafe YouTube channel. Also in the Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook and for my patrons on my Patreon page. And that theme is drum roll please. Trees. Now I'm excited about the subject matter. I've been painting trees for years in landscapes and I've done some tutorials on trees but I thought it would be neat to take a whole month to focus on tree tutorials. There's so much variety. I love trees. They seem to raise their branches and praise of the Lord and so I love them. I tend to think of them as people. And also too I'm going to be focusing some on lessons that will be great for the beginner. So here we go. It should be an exciting month of painting trees. All right, happy tree painting. Let's get started. I had a sweet studio mascot. This is my mama's dog Dasha. There is an actual painting tutorial in this lesson but first I wanted to go over some of the basics. What to do and what not to do when painting trees. All right now first we'll get started in talking about how not to paint trees. Sometimes it's good to learn what not to do first. Have you ever done this before? Maybe as a child. Maybe as an adult. Where we paint a tree a little bit like a silhouette or a lollipop like a green lollipop. Also too we have a tendency sometimes to think we have to give too much detail. Painting literally every leaf on a tree and often we just add too much detail. I'll also be talking in future lessons about distant trees and how we misshape them often. So this is going to be fun but first let me talk about three different concepts for painting trees. Now we know trees have a shape. That's what's called a contour and it is good to go ahead and understand and be able to paint the contour of a tree. Now a way I paint more often is by shape and by value. So often I'll turn my pastel or whatever medium I'm working in to where I can get a bigger stroke or a broader stroke and I will paint my value by shape and value. Large shapes and so right now I'm just painting the shape of the tree, varying my pressure and also getting in some of the trunk and the branches in to get the same shape but with a different concept. Now a method that I recommend is almost combining the two where I'm combining contour and value but I've learned later in my art career to try and capture what I call the gesture of the tree. I'm trying to create the energy within the tree, still focusing on the value and the contour but I'm trying to create the tree almost from the inside out and from its gesture and its life. Now let me explain a little bit more about the difference between contour and gesture. Now this is real time and I'm giving the contour a basic contour of this particular tree. It's kind of like a desert tree. I liked its shape and I am doing the contour now and I think this is how a lot of us, including me when I was first painting, thought of how to draw or paint a tree. I think of the outline of the tree. That's kind of what contour means and a contour can lack gesture, can lack life and so I'm going to show you after I do this contour how to create a tree more with gesture. Now I'm going in now and adding some of the spaces in the tree and I think this is really how a lot of us think when we're first beginning drawing or painting. Now try to keep that same tree in mind and let me explain the difference with gesture. Often when we talk about gestural drawings we typically are referring to the human form. The gesture is more of the motion of the form and I find trees very much like figure drawing can have a motion and a gesture and when we learn to create that gesture the tree, as in the human form, will have more life, more grace and more energy. So these examples are just a prelude to the painting I will be doing of a tree. Keep these things in mind that while it is good to consider the contour of any element, focusing on this without the gesture and the life of that object that you're painting will result in a form that is flat and lifeless. So in this example I hope you can see how I I'm sorry I took the reference image away but I tried to create the gesture and the motion of this tree, its curve and its life with almost like a dancer. Our strokes as artists can have energy, life and movement and fortunately these things can be learned. I am proof of that. I had the most stiff and static trees when I first started so don't lose hope. I'm going to give you some suggestions and advice in this lesson that hopefully will have you creating trees full of life and beauty. And I promise the actual painting tutorial is coming soon but first I'm going to give you a little sneak peek into something that I have a longer and more detailed tutorial on right here on the Monet Cafe channel called Drawing and Painting Trees. I'll try to put a link or maybe at the end of this video. Now this has to do with math and numbers so don't freak out though it's really easy. It has to do with something called the Fubonacci sequence and trust me this is really easy math but literally it is the code that is within nature and how things grow and in the video tutorial that like I said I'll try to provide a link at the end of this video and it reveals how trees grow, their branches and their pattern and it's really cool, interesting. I had a lot of my patrons who watch this video say oh my gosh I went out and looked at how trees grow and it really is according to the Fubonacci sequence. Not that you have to draw your trees in this way and you can shape them in various different ways according to the type of tree but it really does help you to understand better how trees grow and how to better represent trees. So check that video out. Now let's get started actually painting a tree. All right so we'll start with a pretty common tree shape which I think is probably like an oak tree and this is a lovely oak tree from pixabay.com and I've saved a collection of gosh I think close to 90 tree photos in my album. All right so I'm just using some of my little new pastels made by Prismacolor. I'm also using a sheet of gray tones Strachmore paper. I've been using this a lot lately. I find that pastels work quite well on it. You can't get the layering that you can get with sanded surfaces but I still am able to get quite a bit of layering. Many of my last videos have been using this surface. I also will most likely be using my Sennelier Paris collection set. I have it sitting conveniently right next to me and so I might grab some of those too. So first let's get started here talking about or creating this tree with some of the concepts we've already talked about thus far using contour value and gesture and keeping those things in mind. Now don't get frustrated. These don't happen right away. It does take practice. Trust me I've been doing these things for years and I still need to get better. So I'm looking now this tree happens to be I cropped it to an eight by ten or should I say ten by eight format and we've just got a little bank. This tree is on right about in here and I know we've got a trunk coming up. Keep in mind that Fibonacci sequence concept and what I'm trying to do I'm going to go ahead and mark where the top of the tree is. Sometimes this helps if you can kind of get a general idea of where some of these things are. Oh it's wider than you think. That's why it's a good idea to go ahead and do some of this. This would be considered the contour. It comes over quite far. This is a wide tree and then it comes in right about here. We've got comes out with a little dark area here. It's hard to tell what part there's so much green around. It's kind of hard for me to tell what part I think there's a big gap in there and yeah and then all of this comes down kind of behind it. That's what it seems to be anyway. All right something like that and then on this side we've got still working on contour. We've got kind of a little thing that comes out here. I can't tell if it's a branch or a limb but you know what these things don't matter. The brain sort of figures things out. So once again we've got our big shape up here. Come in and up here and a little indention there and then we're coming in and out here. I said it's deceiving how large this tree is so that's why it's good to keep an eye on your proportions of what you're drawing on and I do think this comes down lower than I had done so I'm going to bring it down a little lower and make my hill more like this. We've got a little bit of a shadow. It kind of helps just keep things in perspective. All right so now we've got a general idea of this tree shape and that's what that would be called the contour. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and add in some of the values. I love using these little new pastel prismacolor pastels because you can just turn them on their side. They're great for sketching. I'm going to keep it a little bit light but what I'm doing is I'm just looking at some of the areas of value and they're also kind of gathered in in clumps in a way and typically you get darker values in towards the trunk of the tree so and usually lighter values or towards the outside of the tree. Also too we can kind of see that the sun is we've got a shadow cast like over here so it's probably like this way. We're getting a lot of light like right in here so let's just get in some value real quick and then I'll keep working. All right now we're going to start working with some some gesture and we've got just a general idea of values in here. I can tell once again like that Fibonacci sequence this is kind of that one of the larger sides to the trunk and also too these things skip along we're going to have foliage in front of it so don't make your trunk all the way solid kind of pay attention as to where it gets dark where there's leaves in front and then you're kind of varying your pressure as to where you put your your trunk marks. This has a lot of foliage in front of it here a lot of foliage in here and then we've got some some trunks that are kind of turning into branches and coming up little dark areas here there and everywhere and the great thing about painting trees is it's okay if you get a leaf out of out of place you know whatever usually that's okay so it's not as specific as say a person or a pet so that's a good thing. All right also too keep in mind that a tree is not flat it's got three dimensions we've got branches or masses coming towards us and going away from us so we don't want our tree to feel flat. Some of these branches in here are kind of going off and away into the distance they're going away from you so you know we can occasionally throw in things that look like they're prospectively going off in a different direction away from the viewer. Here there's a little area it's kind of dark got a few branches dark in here to get it too dark right in here because I'm going to add some some highlights in there it's a little bit more dark in here and because with pastels we can layer that's why it's okay to just get a general value study that's a little bit dark perhaps but we know especially if you're working on a sanded paper that we're going to have some layering ability. I want to keep these outside areas pretty light I don't want a hard edge and I want to be able to do some negative painting with some sky holes I do want to accentuate the gesture a little bit more of this tree kind of going up a hill and it's kind of leaning more that way all right so there's a general idea we've got a little gesture we've got a little contour and we've got some values in that should be fairly easy I am going to go ahead just for the heck of it and get in some of this this background here I did like how that hill was kind of coming back this kind of comes down here sloping down and then it goes kind of back here almost like it slopes up again back there okay and then we've got some other trees back in here I won't get too crazy with that because this is just not supposed to be too uh too difficult here we'll just get some value back here how about that just to suggest something else going on back here and that's the way it works really when things are receding into the distance you're not going to see a whole lot of detail the color gets lighter usually duller and the color is usually cool off a little bit so so that should be good I am going to go ahead and get this shadow in a little bit better it's like it goes uphill it's kind of neat I like that goes uphill quite a bit actually and that really gives it a little bit more of that three-dimensional form there's another shadow over here I kind of like that all right so we're getting our value in here and then we'll be able to start adding some color and interest to this tree all right now we're going to be giving the tree some form and some value and some color and later we will be adding the negative spaces in here so I'm going to go ahead let's see what I've got here in my little new pastel selection here this is what color is this let's test this out here see where can you see better probably over here that's a I don't even know what that color is but I'm going to use it to get some value in here and typically if you're going to do pastels as from hard to soft that's the way you want to go you want to use your harder pastels first because they won't layer well later on top of the soft pastels soft pastels usually you can get on last and they're more vibrant in color and so that's a really a general rule of thumb with pastel painting I'm not really loving this color it's kind of too dull but I'll go ahead and use it to get a little bit more value in here all right so we got that going now let's see here I think I will get in some of these if you squint your eyes that's a good way to see things I think I'm going to go ahead and get even darker values in here with for the tree trunk a tree trunk doesn't always have to be brown either you can use various colors I've got a nice dark here let's see how dark that is that's that's actually really dark green in the Paris collection here's a really dark blue that's pretty dark so I'm going to get this darkest dark that's pretty blue you might have to do something with that and we've got some shadows coming up in here too oh I like how this uh sometimes too once you um get it in then you can kind of start really looking at where some of the gestures are in the tree and how things are curving or moving this is when you can start really getting some gestural energy going on in there a little thick there and all I'm doing is really squinting my eyes and looking at where these these shapes fall I notice there is kind of a decent amount of dark going on in there and I'm going to go ahead this is pretty dark in here I'm going to layer over it with some lighter values this is still like I said back in here there's like a branch that's going back once again like that three-dimensional feel and I'm just going here and getting in the little areas of dark kind of scumbling scumbling just means making little random shapes and pressured so I'm getting it in and again there's a pretty much dark in here in this middle portion of the tree there's a little decent amount of dark kind of going on up in here here there's really some darks going on here and notice one other thing I am not painting or drawing leaves I have not drawn a single leaf and we don't really see leaves when we're looking at a tree even a tree at this distance is pretty close I mean I could zoom in and look at individual leaves but it's our brain that's imagining leaves really when things are far we don't see the leaves oh when I first started painting I messed everything up I was drawing leaves on every branch it was just like nuts we have a little bit of dark what is something I'm having a hard time seeing what's part of this tree and what's part of the background the values are really similar all right so that's a general value going on of some more darks I think I will go ahead and get this dark down in here this shape it's like there's a little area right underneath it and then it comes kind of like right behind it and kind of goes uphill like that actually that's not as dark down there okay so there's some more darks in there now I'm going to go ahead and get some of these middle values of the greens and I think for that well I'd say middle to dark let me see this or this here that's also almost too dead kind of like that other little prismacolor I was using so I think let me look over here in my greens this is a really dark green I think this is a terry Ludwig and yeah it's pretty dark I may just pop in a few of these in because it's going to give some color interest with that blue often it's good to kind of combine some colors and not just let the colors they stand alone they have so much more interest when you combine things and you know of course I'm working on unsanded paper so that means that I don't get as many layers and so I need to keep that in mind look at the screen this is a nice green it's a dark but it's um it's a little cooler so I'm going to get this in some of the areas like a lot of this is um it's pretty dark I'm just giving little shapes here and there and um bringing it down through here pretty soon I think I'll go ahead and add where some of the light is uh there's more light in here than I'm seeing over here and there's more light here and here there's some of these darks over here kind of behind once again three-dimensional that tree is things are going back in the distance and maybe a little bit down in there get this in just to fill in some of these holes all right and now I'm going to go ahead and get in more of my warmer green see how much lighter I got here and I know there is some of this up in the top branches here and there see how they're layering on top if I didn't layer that dark down this light wouldn't have anything to rest upon and all I'm doing is kind of looking at the shapes notice I'm turning different directions to to get the general idea of the shapes of some of these clumps of value that's really all it is it's little clumps of value and color and I'm looking at how they're shaped which directions they're going in keeping some of those darks back there and just paying attention the tree starts to take form at this at this point that's still pretty dark back in there but I think I'm going to hit just a little bit of these lights down in here a little bit a little bit there's a little area kind of coming out here like this and in here is where there's some branches coming towards you once again three-dimensional these are coming at you like like in one of those 3d movies where things are kind of coming towards the viewer it's a little bit down in here that's still pretty dark and this is all pretty dark over here there's a little bit in here that's a little lighter once again kind of three-dimensional coming at you so this tree won't feel flat and maybe a little bit more in there I can go in and add more darks later if I would if I want to I feel like this is showing up a little too much there but uh I'll fix that in a minute I don't want to over develop this right now okay all right so um maybe a little more in here this does have some little bits on the tops here it's got an interesting shape and I can get more of the shape of this tree when I um when I carve in some sky holes all right so there's that now we're going to go to a little bit brighter lighter value and um a green that is more like a tree green you would think of this is probably too light let's check it out yeah let's see if I can get something in this set it's not quite that bright this one is a little bit better it's a little more dull let's see maybe maybe not yeah okay so I'm just going to go in here now I'm going pretty hard because once again I'm working on unsanded paper I'm losing some layering ability remember this one that was three-dimensional and coming towards us oh yeah I'm losing layering that's because these are so soft uh senile pastels are really really soft and I've got one that's kind of coming out here towards the viewer okay but this is starting to make that three dimensional shape and form just continue to look for those brightest areas I think I may go ahead and add some of this in here and do one that's a little bit brighter for these so I'm going to go ahead and fill in some of this some of these areas this one like I said it's not all that bright just a couple little spots in here you want to make sure you don't do this everywhere on the tree if you start doing the same thing all over the place it's going to lose its form I have done that I am the queen of doing that there's a little spot right here that's got some bright so um who said it I think I heard Marla begetta say it first if it's everywhere it's nowhere so that is so true because then there's no point of interest it's all the same all right so I think I am going to go get one of those brighter greens I don't know do I want a green more like this more like this see this one's cooler so let me get some of those cooler greens maybe yeah I like that green that's nice yeah I go a lot of times for the warm greens and um I I think sometimes these cooler greens really look interesting okay now this is the area where it was to me if I squint my eyes here here a couple little other areas are the brightest once again there are areas that are kind of coming at you and um there's a couple in here and you could get a lot better results with this if you um if you use sanded paper so all right now I'm going to take this lighter one this is where I'm going to add just the lightest highlights so I've used about what four values of greens sometimes these Sennelier pastels um when a pastel is machine made this is something I heard I can't remember what artists said it um sometimes they have little ridges on them machine cuts them when they're hand rolled for example I got to go to mount vision um pastel manufacturing company because it's in Tampa and I live in the Tampa area so I have a video actually on how they're made and they are hand handmade and rolled so they have nice smooth edges all right so I feel like I've lost a little bit of the gesture of this tree so it's looking a little too round and clumpy so I'm going to go in and get some more dark scenarios then I'm going to carve in some negative shapes all right I feel like that bottom of the trunk needs some um more darks that are warmer it's a little too cool resist the urge to paint what you think is a tree shape sometimes our brains get in the way I say that often when I'm painting or teaching our brains like to paint what we think something looks like and sometimes we're wrong and sometimes the thing isn't shaped like we're imagining it's shaped and it's a little uh it gets if it can be cliche or boring when we when we paint like that you know this is that area where I said there was some activity coming like moving away and I'm not painting leaves I'm just doing little shapes that's really given the feeling that something is further away that is quite dark right back behind here and this one too see how that's going to make it feel like it's behind the tree and I'm not pressing hard I'm using varying pressures um as I paint now I'm going really light here I knew I wanted a little bit more dark my um new pastel wasn't allowing me to get some of that so I'm just coming into some of the areas where I feel like it's a little darker and then um got a shape here let's see keeping that Fibonacci sequence in mind not that you have to paint things to where somebody's going to come along and count a one one two see I've kind of got three things going on here um this would probably be more like the one and the two right here but um it helps you in knowing the fact that there's going to be multiplicables and they get smaller as they branch out so that's usually a really good thing to learn when you're trying to paint trees I I recommend you do that little Fibonacci sequence thing this is the point on the Monet Café channel where the commentary ends you will be able to see the rest of this painting process sped up to some lovely music now my patrons if you're watching here and your patron you're going to get the extra content you're going to get real time from here on out I'm also going to be talking a lot about sky holes painting negatively with trees but don't feel bad Monet Café it's my patrons who actually allow this free content on Monet Café and for me to be able to keep doing this so God bless my patrons and God bless all of my subscribers here on Monet Café I appreciate you all right guys enjoy this to music and I will be back at the end you can see the final and I hope you are learning a lot and if you decide to recreate from this tutorial I would love for you to tag me on social media sites so that I can see your lovely creations tag me on Instagram at Susan Jenkins artist and my Facebook page is the art of Susan Jenkins be sure to find me there and follow me as well all right guys here we go I hope you guys have enjoyed this tutorial and I hope I broke down painting trees in a way that will help you have fun and create some beautiful trees of your own as always I'd love for you to share and tag me on my social media sites if you create from this lesson you can see all of those right there in this end screen and if you'd like to become a patron that would be awesome we have a great family and I love seeing your artwork all right happy painting and God bless