Loose Impressionist Painting: Tree in the sun Oil or Acrylic

This is a paint along course where I also cover tips and tricks on how to create a loose and colorful painting in a modern impressionist style. I chose to paint a simple tree surrounded by just a few elements: the sky, a plain grass field and some elements in the background. This way we can focus on detailing and texturing the painting without working towards tying together too many objects, each with their own values, hue and color saturation.

Painting this tree gives us a lot of freedom to experiment with different textures by using brushes and a palette knife interchangeably.

Trees and other organic elements like bushes help you develop your own style by exploring how the appearance of branches and leaves is given using the palette knife or different size brushes. We are looking to give our art a painterly feel with clear, bold brushstrokes.

The whole course is in real time so you will be able to see step-by-step how the painting is created, not skipping a single streak of color.

Please make sure you:

• have at least a palette knife and a 3 quarter inch brush for the process

• have some solvent handy. You can buy turpentine or any other solvent from your local art supplier

• download the attached reference photo so you have something to compare (print it if possible)

TIP: If you don't have acrylic burnt sienna for the underpainting, you can dilute your oil burnt sienna with a lot of solvent and it will dry a lot faster, even less than an hour if it is thin enough. For this painting it's best to get the coat as opaque as possible but it is a common practice to have the underpainting a lot thinner so don't worry if you can still quite see the canvas.

Hope you enjoy the course and don’t forget to post a photo of your work :). I am really excited to see what your finished painting will look like.

Also don’t forget to follow me for more courses in the future.

Cheers!