CRH Studios Landscape Tree Painting

I start by rolling on the mirror mirror, which is the design seven product that is going to give you the shimmer at the end of this lovely landscape. So I'm using a band. Brush is a it's a rather stiff fan brush. It doesn't have to be big. And the reason I want it to be stiff is so it'll just hold the shape for me.

It'll hold the product and I'm using at the beginning the green oxide. Then I add some of the Phthalo blue or the red shade to and not yet, but soon. Here goes. We start adding just a touch of black. Just a tiny bit to the dirty brush. It is the same stiff band brush that I use vertically for the for the, you know, the stem.

The the bride going up to the heavens motion. And then I use it horizontally and you'll notice I stagger back and forth left to right and I do turn my hand even as I go to maybe unload heavier it in one direction than the other. So we're just going to fill some of that in right now. Now, I take a large what's called a chip brush, which I wanted to make sure that anyone could get anything they needed.

So I just used an old chip brush. It wasn't anything fancy and just started blurring some of the trees. Then I add a little bit of mirror mirror to my brush and start really softening and blurring out those very background trees because this is not your focal point. You want to make sure you have background, so your foreground tells more of the story starting the next layer.

If you don't have any of the mirror, mirror on there, it's not going to blend easily. So I wanted to make sure we had enough product to wear all of the the the layer of the next trees had something to to land on, ironically, to where they'd still be able to blend when we come back, because we want this layer to be soft.

I've learned many lessons by doing this video. One of the lessons is the position of the camera. I'm very sorry that out there you go. That it doesn't show my exact strokes. I will next time. But hey, you know, every. Huh? All right. So notice I go vertical with the trunk. There you go. That's the word I was looking for.

And now I go horizontal with the lens leaves. I get a little bit bigger on this layer. The back layer being farther away is smaller. And as I go more into the foreground, as we go into the foreground, our trees are getting bigger, smaller at the top, larger at the bottom, some funky ones in between. Have fun with it.

Take your time, but don't take too much time. You don't want the mirror mirror to dry out where it's not going to blend for you. If you need to stop for a long period of time, I would start between the layers of the the background, you know, the like the first layer. We had real foggy. Okay, you could take a break after that, then come back and do this layer.

You can take a break after you finish this layer, but not in between. Not, not while you're not in between. While you're trying to finish a layer. So you'll notice there's the green more of the green oxide. Then you can see where the Phthalo blue has been added to the trees. And there's no absolute here. You can do more of that.

They'll go blue, you can do more of the green, you can do more of the black. This is just a fun activity for you to enjoy and learn some of the products using the mirror. Mirror itself is a different animal. It's not a standard paint that you would do a lot of art with, but I have found it to be amazing for doing artwork and even for murals.

I'm softening with the chip brush now it's unloaded, but I will come back and use more mirror mirror loaded onto my chip brush. As you can see, I just did that soft and vertically and horizontally. The trees are vertical and horizontal in my strokes. Also, the blurring is vertical and horizontal and my strokes. Make sure you have a rag handy because the rag is going to help you unload your brush whenever there's too much product.

It's very this is a very, very soft touch. Do not press hard, super soft, soft, soft. I just learned it's more mirror, mirror back onto the brush. Not much in a very, very soft stroke. Nice. And also you decide when do you want a soft You know, you want to make it softer. You want to make it not so soft.

Where do you want to leave it more of an off white If you want it to start going a little more to the green soft greens and blues grays, even this would be a beautiful black and white or a sepia toned monotone artwork. You can go that direction even. Here we go again. We're going to add some more trunks vertically, starting to add a little more black into my brush.

Now. So it has all three colors. It has the green oxide that they low blue red shade and some carbon black in there. All the slow flow acrylics, slow drying acrylics, vertical and horizontal movement, just a little bit of a blur here. We can become more in focus with each layer you bring to the front. Here we go vertical and horizontal.

You can see it's a little more black to make the trees a little bit darker, stand out a little bit more coming down lower on the land as we start adding some color to the ground. This is also I'm still using a a fan brush. You could use a flat brush for this. Make sure you have a rag.

You always want to have water and a rag around and you'll see why. Here we go. So I've added a little bit of water and a little bit of mirror mirror to my brush as I go through the colors, start blending in there we go some mirror, mirror into the to the ground, and then we're going to start moving some of this product with the rag.

There we go. Now, this is a stain pad. You don't have to have a stain pad. You could use paper towel, which I've changed over to you. You can use cotton rag, you know, just something that's going to move your material to manipulate your material however you want it to look like this would be pretty with a stream in it to.

And of course, since it's art, you can imagine it to be whatever you want it to be. So I'm coming back with the fan brush with some mirror mirror and it drags some of the color around from your tree and that is okay, this is a time for you to play and work with your products and learn your products.

Everything is still vertical and horizontal, softening and softening just move from a bigger brush to a smaller brush. That's all it is. Paper towel. You can remove some if you want to. I like to move it around. You don't always have to have fancy tools to make your art say what you wanted to say. Okay, I'm going back with the fan brush.

You're going to add another layer more in the foreground vertical for your trunk, horizontal for your lens, for your leaves. And I turn it over all the way to the edge to get all short verticals. I mean, short horizontals and then of course, full out with my band to get the wider branches. Also, what I'm doing with this layer after I load my brush every now and then, I'm going to load into a little bit of the mirror mirror again and also the mirror mirror product that's in your background is moving around with your brush as you are placing your branches.

So your painting is actually going to dry differently than what you see while you're actually creating it. Don't let that scare you. And remember, you can stop whenever you want. Your art. Let it speak to you, and then it's your job to listen. Sometimes I have a hard time with that, so I've come back with a little bit of a liner to get some finer points on the tops of my trees.

A liner brush is just, you know, a straight a finer brush. You don't really have to do that. But it's nice to have a little bit of detail here in your old finer detail than I brought in a smaller fan brush. But I always seem to revert back to my big guy. So when you look back at the painting, you see more of the green oxide in the background and a little bit of the Taylor Blue and then the a little bit of the black as you start adding down in, down and down further into the foreground, you know, so you see what a really large part your mirror mirror played in your painting.

There's really no other product quite like it. There are some that are a little similar, but I'm I'm really having fun with and really having fun with the mirror mirror from design seven seven. I don't really feel like I have to talk to you every single second because creating is, you know, really comes from inside. So enjoy yourself.

I hope. I hope, I hope this go back with a little bit of your mirror mirror at the end if you need to, to add or just a little bit of snow to the tips of your leaves. That's going to happen naturally on the bottom, but you might want to make additional light highlights with your snow and your and your sun.

Also, you can go back and add a little bit of color here and there if you want to. Your friend Fan Brush is a great tool to make that happen. You want to add a tree here and there. You feel like there's a void, feel like there's too much. You can take your rag and pull it off. I hope you've enjoyed painting this landscape piece.

I enjoyed making it for you, and next time I will try better positioning my hands to where you can see more of what I'm doing. Thank you. All so much for visiting with me and for painting with me. Do you have any questions? Please send me an email. Cindy@CRHStudios.com Let me know what you're thinking.

Let me know if you want to be informed of any future virtual classes. Also, I'd love to have to have you come to Houston. Visit me here. Just let me know. Send me a line in. Thank you so much for painting with me.

Price: FREE

Tools Required by Students

• Design 7 Seven: Mirror Mirror Metallic Medium
• Low Nap Roller 4" or 6"
• Golden Paints High Flow Acrylics - Green Oxide
• Golden Paints High Flow Acrylics - Phthalo Blue (red shade)
• Golden High Flow Acrylics - Carbon Black
• Firm Fan Brush
• #2 artist brush (for acrylics)
• 4" chip brush
• Artist Canvas Board (or surface of your choosing, but nothing too slick)
• Rag

Products used in Class

• Design 7 Seven
• Canvas or Panels
• Golden Artist Colors