How To Paint Trees With A Filbert Brush! Painting Tutorial

Hey guys and welcome back to the channel. So today I've got a quick little video here on how to paint different trees using a few different brushes using the following colors. Brilliant Yellow Green, Quicker's Green Hinged Permanent. We're going to be using some Titanium White. I'll also be using some Mars Black and some Burnt Sienna, but of course you can make trees using any other variations of these colors. So I'm going to begin this video with a filbert brush and a liner brush. The first tree I'm going to make is just your typical evergreen tree. So I'm going to use the liner brush first just so that I can make a little trunk. I'm going to take a combination of a little bit of Water, Black and Burnt Sienna so you can see that pretty deep dark chocolatey color that we get. And I'll simply just place my pinky here to steady my finger and I'm painting a small tree so that I have enough room to demonstrate a whole bunch of different trees here for you guys. So you can either start your tree trunk at the top or you can push a little. I like to do this push to make it a little bit wider at the bottom and then pull up. Take a little bit more water on my brush. Okay so next I'm going to take a little bit of my Quicker's Green Hue, a little bit of that Black, a little bit of Burnt Sienna in there, get a nice deep dark color first. Then I'm going to start at the top, the very end of my brush, very little pressure and just by tapping and pushing I can make it. The amount of pressure that I put down on the canvas with the brush will determine the size of branches that I'm getting so if I barely touch and then I start to turn my brush like this I can get tiny little ones on the top. I'm going to use a little bit of that green again without washing my brush and just push until I have a little bit of both greens on the tip of my brush and with very little pressure we're going to create a bit of a highlight or mid-tone in this case. I'm going to just wash all that paint on my brush, get it really clean, dry, get some more of that light green on there and just for the sake of it we'll say the light is coming on this side therefore hitting the branches on this side so you can add a little highlight like that. The next tree I want to show you guys is a different kind of a tree that has an apple tree or a big oak tree and I'm going to be using the filbert brush because the tree trunk is a little bit thicker so I'm pushing gently and then I'm going to just let off. I'll wash all that out and now to create some smaller branches I'm going to switch over to my liner brush again. Before I do those branches I'm just going to add a little bit of white to my burnt sienna and this time because it's already lighter on this side I'm just going to go with this and create a little highlight and kind of a wiggle just to create some highlights here maybe a little pattern so when you're painting wet on wet when the paint is wet underneath that you're applying paint on top you can kind of just blend that together to get a lighter brown color we can start adding some branches and keep in mind most of these branches are going to be covered up but you just want to wiggle the tip of your brush like this and now we can come in and start adding the treetops so I'm going to use that green again a little bit of the black to get a nice dark base and I'm going to hold my brush like this push and tap lifting my brush each time before I tap again so you're not pulling pressing and pulling you definitely want to get that nice dense looking tree and texture make sure you have some here in the front I like to create my treetops in little sections you've got a big old oak tree here we'll just finish the bottom by adding a little bit of grass I'm going to wash that paint out and I'm going to go into my light green now for a highlight and when you're painting wet on wet like this adding your highlight you often can get a mid-tone kind of at the same time you're doing two things at once which is really nice so I'm applying it on top and partially above and I'm just going to add this highlight on all sides the front and the sides of the tree just so that I can demonstrate this multiple times for you guys because the best way to learn is by repetition so concentrate on my handling of the brush and my brush strokes so notice how I'm leaving the underneath part dark you want to have that nice balance of light and shadow so that you can create that realistic light and dark making your tree look more 3d okay so for the next tree I'm going to demonstrate a weeping willow tree and I'm going to do the same type of trunk so again I've got a clean silver brush I'm going to take my burnt sienna a little bit of black and nice thick base here I'm going to wash that out I'm going to switch over to my liner brush now so I can create those highlights and branches so I'll take a again a little bit of the burnt sienna and white let me just add a little highlight there we'll clean up this base and camouflage that with some grass in a moment okay for the branches I'm going to take some black and I'm not using a lot of water right now because I don't need to spread this paint out very far so I'm just going to be doing some smaller branches push wiggle and then pull over keep in mind a lot of these branches are going to be hidden so don't worry too much about trying to make them look perfect you're not going to be seeing all that you're not going to be noticing that maybe they don't look perfect because you've got all of that weeping willow leaves and foliage coming down so you could just start to pull a little bit here for the beginning stages of those weeping willows back over to my filbert and first I'm going to do a light green like this so we get a pretty glow going in the background and I'm just gonna light little pull and flick like this even if you pick up a little bit of that brown that's going to make it look a bit more natural next time you look at a weeping willow tree you'll notice that there's little bits of yellowy brown in there I'm going to start to tap here in the front because I don't want to smear completely smear that tree trunk but I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're painting trees is that they forget about the front of the tree they're just thinking about the sides and the top and they think they can't go over top of their tree trunk but you know realistically you guys the foliage on the tree is coming around from the top draping in front the sides and the back so even if it feels awkward and a little bit scary doing that you really have to so I'm just going to any kind of little wiggle or tap here you get this light green down here at the base and I'm going to go right in to a little bit of black and green and I'm going to start tapping so you can do a little tap and a slight little pull I'm going to take a little bit of my light green out I don't want to over blend too much so you could wait until your tree trunk is dry but in this case you can see that it's not really necessary you don't have to and you can bring down your willows as far as you want so I like to do these little scumbles and pulls and then if you feel like you maybe brought them down a little bit too low you catch it excuse me if you catch it right away you can take it off I'm just going to go back here into my light green maybe take a little bit of white make this stand out just a little bit more here just tap you want to have the paint on the tip of your brush because that's the only part of the brush that we're using at this point next tree that I want to show you is a palm tree so I'm going to be using my liner brush first to create the palm tree tree trunk I'm going to use black and my brown and I'm going to go and put this on an angle have it a big sweeping palm tree right here narrower at the top and then wider at the base I'm going to go into my burnt sienna white so you could add your highlights using this brush and then you could also use your filbert brush take a little bit of white on the very tip hold my brush like this pull to create those lines new pattern that a palm tree has a little bit more whiteness I'll just clean this up a little bit okay now I'm going to go into my black and my darker green see how I'm pushing like that kind of fans that brush out a little bit you're just going to make a bunch of arches like this I'm going to get a little bit of water on my brush to loosen that paint up and then that way I can just line my brush up and do light little pulls and flicks like this and that will give it that feathery palm leaf look and then when you get to the end of the palm leaf you can turn your brush to make it a little bit pointier I'm going to have one come right in the center here in front and cover up the top of my tree trunk so you just want that black base first that dark green with the black so we can have some nice contrast and some highlights we'll be able to make some highlights in a minute here and I'll just take a little bit of my light green on the very tip of my brush you can do this when your palm leaves are wet or if they're dry so I'm going to do not apply a lot of pressure and just pick a few I'm not going to highlight every single one and it's kind of nice because it's something that you can kind of just go back over if you happen to add a little bit too much and you can even add other ones in between those existing palm leaves making it look a little bit thicker so here's an example of what not to do I pulled a little bit too much off of there and you can see how the difference so if you were just to add green light green over the white base you're not going to get that 3d look three-dimensional you need that dark base underneath I'm going to push a little bit of that off there and I'll make another little palm leaf right here you can also kind of just cut in like this and make more singular ones okay so for my next tree I'll demonstrate how to paint some birch trees so I'm going to take some black first with my liner brush and start pulling some lines for my tree trunk I'll have another one really close to it and then we'll start to pull I'm going to get a bit of water on my brush here start to pull our branches right where we left off for our tree trunk we're going to gently and gradually add some little branches from there okay now I'm going to take some white I'm just going to drag and then pull so not quite a bit on your brush drag like you would use a palette knife and then kind of pull little lines in some areas so you get that because it's really the bark is like this paper on the outside it starts to peel off and it's it just wraps around the tree trunk and it's you want to create that um the direction that it's going in so to make it kind of looks round it gives it that round look so you would do these lines and we'll do the same thing and in some areas you can use more white obviously you want to have a darker base first especially working on a white canvas putting painting white right on white it's not gonna you're gonna get that it's not gonna show up right so we need this dark base under here now you could use gray then cleaning the white on my brush getting a little bit of my black on here I'm going to take a few areas to add some little almost like oval shapes little dabs just here and there okay and now we'll work on the foliage and of course all of these trees can be painted with a few different brushes but for today's video and because I really enjoy using the filbert brush I wanted to make this video all about how to paint these trees with a filbert brush so I'm going to take my green a little bit of black I don't want to have too much water I've got a little bit too much water in my brush so I'm going to just wipe that off on my little towel and I'm just gonna do little sections you can turn the brush see sometimes if I want my foliage to look like kind of rounded like that then I'll use it this way kind of get that half moon shape that the filbert brush has or you can turn it this way and get a different shape to your tree or your treetops and leaves and I'll just do that a little bit more here these are looking a little bit smaller so I want them to be too light otherwise my highlights won't show up remember go over part of your tree trunk okay now I'm going to take my light green I'm going to take a little bit of white with it so that it shows up a little bit better and we'll just blend and mix it up and then I want to tap to load my brush to get it to look kind of separated and poofy like that and pick a few sections and a little bit more white I'm gonna add a grassy area down here okay so I've got a little bit of room here I'm trying to think of other trees right now I wasn't anticipating on having this much room but that's good because I'm having fun with this and I love to show you guys different techniques and things that you haven't seen or learned before so what about and I don't know what the trees are called but like when you see pictures of Africa and like the Serengeti there's like yeah sorry guys maybe you can leave it in the comments below I'm sure I know what they're called I just can't think of it so I'm going to do this mainly in silhouette thinking about a African sunset that I painted years ago with an elephant in it and of course the trees they're low they don't have a tall tall tree trunk and I'll paint a few of these kind of short and squat little trees these are really fun little trees to paint grass and whatnot down here take a little bit of my burnt sienna I might change it from silhouette to well I'll show you both I can do it in silhouette first and then add some light on it after I'm going to switch it on over to my liner brush to do the branches so they kind of grow flat out there on the top which is really neat I'm just going to paint some wiggly branches that come out both sides and then they come up a little bit here they kind of remind me of bonsai trees speaking of bonsai trees my son and our in-law got me a bonsai tree growing kit for Christmas and I've been a little bit late in getting it started and I started it a week and a half ago and I was so excited this morning to see one of them sprouting up already or two of them actually I'm really really excited because I've I've heard that they can be tricky so I'm going to make this branches really wiggly again just pulling and then using the tip of my brush where I want to have smaller ones and then we'll bring up a few just a little bit here okay and now I'll add the treetops so I'm going to do this like I said in silhouette first taking my brown but mostly black and we're not going to make this come up too high and we're going to have them quite see-through so we're going to have these little sections tap tap tap this is when the filbert brush is really handy for painting these types of trees I would say the perfect brush to use brushes down here too that's what they would look like in silhouette now I can add green while washing my brush off mix those colors up both greens with the remainder of the paint in my brush and you can take this from silhouette sunset time of day and change the time of day and the lighting just by tapping over so I could add another highlight with my bright green here and a little bit of white okay I don't want to have my brush too saturated I'll just pick a few spots here so this has had time to dry I can also come back and add a few more highlights I'm thinking of those trees that you see in typical Tuscany villa landscape so we can paint those and what I'll do is make a little road first just so that we can kind of get that feeling and I've got the room so I'll start low down here at our little Italian Tuscan villa waiting for us back there okay we'll just have a little road here I'll just soften this a little bit and then with my filbert brush I'm going to take a bit of black with my green and I'll start small I'm just going to make little carrots green carrots they're going to get a bit bigger and then as they get bigger you can start tapping we have these ones that are far away right they're going to just be little lines like that you can also scumble little circles don't forget about your shadows back here in the distance we've got our vineyard back here and I'm getting carried away but I've got the room okay so now to highlight go into our light green I'm probably tapping on the wrong side but I just want to show you guys how you can highlight I need a little bit more room here so I'm choosing this side this is going to dry a little bit darker I'm going to put one here because I made that one a little bit too wide so you can come and you can overlap like that a little bit more of my highlight so just little lines like this for those ones maybe in the distance okay guys so there was just extra one just because I had the room there extra set of trees I don't know what they're called I can't remember I'll call them Tuscan trees no okay so I hope you guys enjoyed this one and I'll see you all soon in my next video bye