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LANDSCAPES www.painters-online.co.uk 14 EXPLORE WATERCOLOUR 2020 Seasonal atmosphere Here’s how careful colour application can bring a painting to life, by Barry Herniman T rees make up so much of the countryside that if you want to be a landscape artist, you will have to paint trees in some form or other. The following pages show four quick paintings that give you some basic colour mixes for trees during the different seasons. Spring After the bareness of the winter, the bright shimmer of that first spring green in the trees is a joy to behold. How to capture that fragmentary feel of the new leaves bursting forth was always a real headache for me as ‘painting‘ it in the traditional way always seemed to come up short. So I started experimenting with a flicking process where the paint would fall in a very random way and all the colours would mix on the paper. This produced the sparkle and light I was looking for. I started off with my light greens by flicking the aureolin onto the paper and then adding the manganese blue into it. That gave me my basic sharp spring greens. I then followed up with my Indian yellow and cobalt blue mix. The bluebells used a mix of French ultramarine and manganese violet, which was flicked onto the paper. The tree trunks and branches were a mix of alizarin crimson and French ultramarine. MIXES USED IN THIS PAINTING ▲ Spring , 16½ x 26¾in. (42 x 68cm) Aureolin French ultramarine Indian yellow Manganese violet Manganese blue Cobalt blue French ultramarine Alizarin crimson