Painting Trees Through the Seasons

Class Preview

Capture all the color and beauty of trees, as they appear at any time of year. Learn how to paint realistic branches, bark, canopies, leaves, blossoms and more.

Understanding Tree Structure

Artist Marianne Broome shows you how to capture the beauty of trees in each season! Start by sketching trees in winter to get the basic structure in place. You’ll mark in the canopy, trunk and main and secondary branches. Then, see how Marianne creates different bark textures.

Evergreen Trees

Get started with trees that don’t change seasonally: evergreens. Marianne begins by painting a white pine, then moves on to a blue spruce. She shows you how to paint groups of needles and highlight individual needles for a dynamic and painterly look.

Winter: Painting Trees Under Snow

The first season up: winter. Snow clumped on trees can be tricky to paint because of shadows and curved edges, so start with a look at what colors go into creating realistic snow. Marianne illustrates how snow settles into tree shapes with a closeup of a branch and a full snow-covered evergreen.

Spring: Apple Blossom

Spring into a light, airy painting of a blossoming apple tree. Marianne shows you how to create a spring-like palette and bring life into your tree structure. Learn how to create depth for new-growth leaves and a sense of individual blossoms by picking a center of focus to boost your detail work.

Summer: Painting the Leaves

Step into the all-green scene of summer! Marianne demonstrates how she breaks down tree photos by creating groupings of leaves, making big leafy trees, such as weeping willows, easier to paint. Then learn how to create form with highlights and shadows and vary the color for a realistic touch.

Fall: Groupings of Trees & Stunning Color

Take what you’ve learned about leaf groupings and apply it to a fall painting by grouping colorful trees! Get painterly, working from the background to the foreground and varying the colors. Marianne selects one tree as her center of focus and shows you how to make your brushstrokes shine.

Painting the Forest

Marianne wraps up her class with a painting of a beautiful forest. She demonstrates how to use cool colors for the background and warmer colors and looser brushstrokes for the foreground to suggest depth and perspective. She also shows how to create the filtered sunlight look of a forest with vivid and varied colors.