Painting Trees - Varied Sameness! Painting Demonstration continued...

The above is where I am at currently on this painting, having worked on the trees behind the lake and at the left side. While this looks reasonably simple to paint, it is actually quite difficult to get it right. What is needed is to paint what initially looks like all the same, but is really what I call "varied sameness". It is quite tricky to get it right and when it goes wrong you end up with just a green mess. To explain, you have to paint the trees in such a way that they have all the variations that occur in nature (obviously you have to simplify somewhat), and without having too much of one shade in any place, and at the same time keeping a consistent tone and pattern across the foliage. That mightn't be a good explaination, so I have a closeup of what I mean below. I have variations in the colour on the tree, but without any of the shades dominating another. I create all the shades in this picture using various mixes of ultramarine blue, viridian green, cadium yellow, paynes grey, lemon yellow and titanium white. You can experiment yourself, to get various shades. Other trees I have used other colours too, so there really is a lot of greens that you can achieve!

Looking at where I have got to above, I still need to do some more on the trees section of the painting as it dries further, to adjust and balance the tones a bit. I want them to appear natural and not standing out too much as they are just background to the main subject. I shall continue this online demonstration over the weekend or so...

Here is an example of "varied sameness" -- that sometimes elusive aspect of painting, and the reason why painting a forest of nothing but green can be so tricky...That's it for today, if you are enjoying the blog be sure to check back or link to it.