How to Paint Leaves With Oils
Due to its consistency and the ability to create textured work, oil paint is ideal for painting landscapes and especially foliage. Creating leaves with oil paint requires a minimal set of colors and simple brush strokes. Whether you're going for your own stylistic approach or trying to capture the blended beauty of Monet's leaves, here's how you can use oil paints to capture the intricate details and coloring of any type of leaf you choose.
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Instructions
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Determine the composition of your painting. Sketch in the elements that will make up the composition, such as a tree or several trees. Sketch leaves on the tree. Don't worry about too much detail. Just get the basic outline of the leaves. If you're painting a fall scene, sketch a few leaves scattered over the ground.
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Choose the oil colors you will need for your painting. If you're doing summer leaves in, you'll need dark green, black and white oil paints. Fall leaves will require brown, yellow, red, orange and green oil paints.
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Paint over your sketched leaves to cover the pencil lines. Start with the base color, which will be dark green paint for summer leaves or brown for fall leaves.
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Add the appropriate colors to your leaves to create spring, summer or fall colors. If you want summer leaves, add very light touches of white and black paint over the dark green to create shadow and texture. Consider adding a thin line of black around the edges of some of your leaves to create a separated appearance. If you're painting fall leaves, add touches of yellow, red and orange paints with a thin tipped brush, working the colors in until they blend together to create the fiery look of fall leaves.
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Use the tip of a thin brush to dab your painting to bring up texture in your leaves as well as the other elements of your landscape. Creating texture is one of the key features of a good oil painting and will add a three-dimensional look to your painting that will bring it to life.
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