Paint Winter Pine Trees – Paint a Winter Barn pt 3

Paint Winter Pine Trees is part of a series of acrylic painting tutorials to Paint a Winter Barn landscape. This easy, beginner-friendly painting lesson will show you how to add background trees to your painting.

This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking a link I may make a small commission at no added cost to you. Please see Disclosure page for details.

If you need to start from the beginning you can find that here.

Note: you can use whatever colors you have that are similar

Paint Pine Trees

If you haven’t already, paint the tree trunks with Coffee Bean and a liner brush.

Hopefully from this photo, you can see the tall straight trunks that are not branched. They will be my winter pine trees.

We want the base color for the trees to be very dark green. Thicket will be our main color but we will mix in a touch of Licorice to make it darker.

I use a small pallet knife to mix a tiny bit of Licorice into the Thicket.

Remember that black is a powerful color and will quickly overwhelm the Thicket so be cautious and add just a touch of Licorice to the Thicket. Mix then add more if needed.

Start the very top of the pine trees with the liner, just dab some color on top in a triangular shape. You want the top to be just a little touch and then widen as you work down. (this is where watching the video linked below will come in handy)

After you have the very top painted with the liner then switch to the 3/4 inch Scruffy brush.

Load only the one short edge with the darkened Thicket mix. Gently pounce the color on creating the limbs of the pine tree.

Start narrow and widen as you descend the trunk. Don’t try to be perfect and keep this layer airy.

We will be adding another layer of a lighter color so this one does not need to be opaque.

Let this layer dry. It should not take long as it is a very light coat of paint.

Adding the Next Paint Layer to the Pine Trees

Load the same scruffy brush with just Thicket. Pounce on top of the darker color going down the tree in the same manner. Lightly.

In the video, you will see I did this layer with a small craft sponge and you could too if you wish. But using the scruffy will work great.

Let this layer dry.

In the next photos, you will see the barn is base painted. I just rushed ahead and did that while the Thicket layer was drying.

But in this post I will stick to the trees and the next post will cover the painting of the barn.

Paint Snow on the Winter Pine Trees

If you washed your scruffy brush then make sure it is very dry. Using a scruffy while it is damp tends to make a muddy mess with the paint.

I have a couple of them so I switched to a dry, clean brush.

Tamp the short edge of the scruffy brush into Wicker White, and pounce off excess paint, we want the snow to be airy and light.

Using a light touch tamp the Wicker White onto the trees. Again, keep it airy, we don’t want big globs.

And just a note, don’t overstress on the trees, they are the backdrop and not the main attraction, so if they are not perfect don’t worry about it.

They fade into the background when the rest of the painting is done.

Next up -Paint a Winter Barn

the link for the next segment will be available as soon as it is posted.

thank you

For a copy of the traceable sign-in or sign up for your free account…

Please enjoy and share!