How to Paint Leaves on Trees

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Ralph Papa with papagallery.com. And today we are learning about acrylic painting. In this clip we are going to show you how to paint leaves on a tree. And what I am going to start off with is doing more or less an overall background. Because some of trees are so thick you don't really see much of the the trunks. So I'm going to block in some areas just overall on the tree that would suggest the overall leaf pattern. So I'm just turning my brush random in spots just.... Remembering that the center of the tree has most of the leaves and it really gets very thick in there and as you get out to the perimeter the leaves get thinner. So here I have my overall shape of the tree with some leaves on it and what we are going to do know is put in individual leaves on it to give the feeling of some more detail. And with that I'm going to use a smaller brush ok. And here I'm taking a little brighter yellow, green so that the leaves will stand out. And I"m just going to highlight some areas on the edges just suggesting that there's little clusters of leaves you know in the areas. And again I'm turning the brush and get all different angles of the color to hit the canvas. Oops I got a little too much there. And each turn is actually suggesting a leaf in that area. So you are not really painting each leaf doing a portrait of each leaf, you get a suggestion of a hint of individual leaves. And you don't do it for the whole tree, you do it in clusters of threes and fours in certain spots to stand out, to give the impression that the tree has leaves on it and let the viewer filling in the individual look. So that's basically how we do the leaves. I'm Ralph Papa and thank you for watching."