Lesson Three: Watercolor Palm Tree Tutorial

Hey everyone!

Welcome back to our day three watercolor tutorial!

Today I am going to teach you how to paint a watercolor palm tree.

We are going to tackle a full painting today… but don’t worry it’s still going to be an east practice, going over our watercolor basics.

But instead of breaking up our page into two, we’re going to tackle a full page. I feel like once you can do this you’ll  feel like you can handle a bigger painting.

So today we’re going to go with a wet on dry technique, and we are going to be using these four colors. What is going to make this practice a little bit different is, instead of using the paint straight out of the tube we are going to practice our color mixing (cheers)!!

I have these colors already out on my palette, and I’m going to grab my 12 round brush that we’ve been using in my last couple tutorials. (Click HERE to see Day One)!

I’m going to get it nice and wet with some clean water and we’re gonna start with my Alizarin Crimson… So this is a reddish pink color and I’m going to go in at a diagonal position. Painting only about a fourth of the way down, and then stopping to clean my brush off.

Now I’m going to grab my Cadmium yellow paint and continue painting downward at that angled position.

I’m going to blend the yellow paint up into that alizarin crimson by gently working my paint brush back and forth.

I’m going to go and clean my brush (again), so I can go right back into my clean yellow paint and I can continue painting this color downward without any of the red paint mixed in.

Keep painting getting more water on your brush if you feel like it needs more movement.

There we have our basic gradient wash. We are going to just let this completely dry, and then we’re going to jump into that color mixing I told you about earlier.

We are going to start by using Sap Green and mixing it with Alizarin Crimson. Use an even amount of both of these colors with an even amount of water to create a brown-ish black color. Just take your time and mess with both of these colors till you get the color you are happy with.

I’m actually going to switch brushes I am not going to use my  large brush anymore for this you can put that away and we’re going to switch over to our size six Princeton Snap Brush. I’m going to get my brush wet and tap off any extra dripping water then grab a decent amount of paint on my brush.

Next, I’m going to find the center of my painting, and I’m going to paint a straight horizon line across the entire painting.

Create little bumpy shapes along this line to represent an island or some type of land  off in the distance.

I’m going to add a little bit more black to my island by going over it unevenly to give it a little bit more depth.

Next, let’s clean off our brush and grab a light wash of Alizarin Crimson. With the very tip of my brush and using a  light handed motion I am going back and forth creating thin lines in the water.

This is going to be our palm tree in the foreground.

Now I’m going to fill in the tree trunk while my guide line is wet.

Then at the top I’m going to create very quick line motions to indicate where I want my palm leaves to be. From here we’re

going to create our Palm leaves. Keep using those quick line motions.

Now we’re gonna go just straight into that black paint, and I’m going to come back through and I’m going to splotch this in.

I still want some of that brown to show through to create texture on the tree. Using that same black paint we are going to add a second layer of black palm leaves to our tree. Just use the same quick line motions are we did before.

using that black building on top of that.

These Basics you have just used are going to give you the skills you need to become your own watercolor artist with your own style.

Thanks so much for following along today! If you enjoyed this tutorial please consider signing up for my free newsletter where I will let you know whenever there is a new live lesson in our FREE Beginner Watercolor Course!