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How to paint abstract Birch Trees

Creating texture using salt, plastic cards, sandpaper and spashes

Blue birch trees 4 LR.jpg
Aim of the session


To explore loose, expressive watercolour techniques and create an abstract birch tree painting. This session is about process over perfection, encouraging confidence, mark-making and personal interpretation.



Materials
 

  • Watercolour paper, 300gsm cold pressed

  • Tube watercolours

  • Watercolour pencils (Optional)

  • Cut-up plastic loyalty / gift cards

  • Brushes (medium round + small detail brush)

  • Black fine liner or black biro

  • White gouache

  • Salt (optional)

  • Tissue / kitchen roll

  • Water pot

  • Sandpaper (for watercolour pencil texture)

  • Pencil

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Handy Hints

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Do a few of these and treat them as experiments, some will work, some won't but you'll gain more confidence with the water:paint ratios and colour mixing

Keep randomness and odd numbers in mind.  Our brains want to organise everything very neatly - resist.  When we repeat things in a painting - (birch trees), it's far more exciting to look at when there is lots of variety - do different width trunks, vary the spaces between them, some heavy contrasty trunks with some pale light ones.

Remember atmospheric perspective.  Things in the distance misty, have much less detail and contrast and the colours are desaturated and lack vibrancy.  If you are doing a background, make sure is nice and soft and fades away - then your sharp, colourful, contrasty birch trees will stand out. 

 

Colours:

 

Here are my colour combos from my examples below - feel free to experiment with your own:

Ultramarine Blue & Burnt Sienna
As above with Paynes Grey or indigo to get darker blues

Pthalo Blue, Purple,  & Sepia

Pthalo Blue, Sepia & Burnt Sienna

Paynes Grey

Cad red, sepia and ultramarine blue
Paynes grey, any yellow with some splashes of orange at the end

Cerulean Blue, yellow, Paynes Grey, indigo - optional orange splashes

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All Birch trees Group 1 HR.jpg

  1. Lightly sketch location of birch trees (random in width and spacing)
     

  2. Background (optional) - Some paintings have a background, some don’t – both are correct.

  • Loose washes, splashes , Salt, lifting with tissue, white gouache, watercolour pencil and sandpaper

  • Let it dry fully
     

2. Birch Trees

  • Use the edge of a plastic card to pull tube paint vertically

  • Vary width, spacing, quantity of paint, the angle you hold the card at  and pressure

  • Leave lots white paper showing on the tree trunk 
     

3. Soften

  • Use a damp brush to soften areas

  • Let some edges bleed, others stay crisp
     

4. Details

  • Add birch markings and twigs with a black fine liner

  • Keep it light – less is more

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