An excellent way to evoke depth in your landscape is by painting watercolor trees in the distance!
If you’re a beginner, this can be tricky and you’re probably wondering… how do you make them look farther away? How much detail do you need to add? What techniques and colors should you use?
In this article, I’ll answer these questions with 8 tips to paint better watercolor trees and a step-by-step demonstration so you can follow along!
Let’s get started…
Faraway trees away are often less detailed
The further away the trees are, the less detailed and focused they will be compared to the foreground.
It is important to distinguish this in your painting; the trees in the foreground should always be more detailed.
So how can you make your trees less detailed? The key is to paint the overall shape without adding too much texture. You’ll also want to avoid painting the littlest branches between the foliage.
I use the wet on wet technique to create softer textures and make them appear diffused. Here’s an example of this:
Observe where the light is coming from
Even though the trees are further away you’ll still be able to see where the lightest values are, this is usually the top and sometimes the areas between the trees.
This is if your trees aren’t too far away and are somewhere between the middle ground and complete background.
You’ll start by painting the outline using light green then use the wet on wet dropping technique to add the darker parts of the foliage.
Use cooler/muted colors for distant trees
Remember, if you use the same colors for the trees in the foreground as the distant trees, your painting will become oversaturated.
The further away the trees, the less saturated they will be. Here are some green mixes you can use to paint trees in the distance:
To mute a green you can mix it with its complementary color. In this case, it’s red, adding a very small touch of pyroll scarlet or quinacridone rose to your green mixture can help mute it.
To mix a cool green, you’ll need a little more blue in the mixture, using cool blues such as prussian blue and Pthalo blue will produce cooler greens.
I highly recommend checking out this article:
How to mix landscape greens with watercolor
Avoid adding small branches
It’s easy to get confused when you’re looking at a photograph and notice some branches in between the foliage of the background trees.
Remember that you don’t have to include every detail in your reference image.
The further away the trees are, the less visible the branches will be. You may see a trunk here and there.
The great thing about paintings is that our minds can fill out the missing information and that’s part of what makes them fun to look at!
Hard and soft edges for depth
Wet on wet technique is your best friend when it comes to painting faraway trees. The wet on wet technique creates soft edges that can add more depth and distance to your landscape.
Let’s take a look at these paintings below:
When it comes to photographs you’ll always see hard crisp edges. This is something you can change in your painting.
In the above paintings, I didn’t want the trees to be the main focus of the scene. Adding them in using soft edges and then hard edges for the focal points created contrast.
Add some spaces between the foliage
Leaving a few spaces between the foliage can help give your trees more character.
This especially applies to the more detailed trees in the foreground. Painting asymmetrical shapes can make them more interesting and pleasing composition-wise.
To do this adding a few uneven spaces between the foliage can help.
Here’s an example of a pencil sketch where you can see some spaces peaking through the foliage:
Use layering techniques
Painting the background and foreground trees in one layer can make your paintings look flat. Instead, you can paint the background trees in a separate layer.
Another way is by laying them down in the initial wash when you paint a wet on wet sky. The wet on wet technique will create a soft edges which will help create the illusion of distance.
You can then continue layering more trees with the wet on dry technique.
Sketch when in doubt
If you ever look at a scene and are puzzled at how to go about it, start with a simple pencil sketch. It doesn’t have to be super accurate or even detailed.
It simply has to capture the important elements and their overall shape.
Start by outlining the shape of the trees, noticing where there are large areas of shadow depending on the light source, and treating them as a whole shape.
Demonstration on How to paint watercolor trees in the distance:
Let’s take a look at this example of how to paint trees in the distance. We have a simple field and trees in the very distance, middle ground, and foreground.
This example shows you some of the tips I have included above being used.
Sketch and preparation
I used an outline sketch and filled out some of the areas using Masking Fluid.
Painting the sky
For the sky I used the wet on wet technique and a mixture of cobalt blue and cerulean blue, leaving spaces in between strokes to indicate clouds.
Background trees
Now for the background trees! I used a mixture of prussian blue and Cadmium yellow to mix a cool muted green (more prussian blue). I added a very small touch of scarlet to mute the green.
To paint the background trees I used a combination of wet on dry and wet on wet.
I started by wetting the area just beneath the peaks of the trees. Then using the wet on dry technique to paint the top of the trees and allowing the paint to touch and diffuse into the wetted area.
Using a damp brush I spread and lifted some of the paint to give that foggy look. I allowed it to dry completely then repeated with a second layer of trees.
This time, however, I added very subtle tree shapes in the wet area.
Field and grass
To paint the field I wet the paper with clean water then used a mixture of ultramarine and cadmium yellow constantly adjusting the ratio to make some parts lighter and darker on the field. (More yellow for light green and more blue for darker green)
Once the paper had completely dried, I removed the masking fluid and then drew some blades of grass using the same green mixtures as before. You can do this step now or wait till the end like I did:
Middleground foliage
To paint the middle ground trees, I removed the masking fluid and then wetted the area with clean water.
Starting with a light green mixture (cadmium yellow + cobalt blue), I dropped the paint into the top areas of the foliage.
While the paper was still wet, I added the middle green and dark green shades.
After the paper was dried, I used the same colors and added some dry brush texture.
Foreground tree
To paint the foreground tree, I used the dry-on-dry technique, starting with a light green, then medium green, and finally dark green. I made sure to leave spaces between the foliage for adding branches.
Once the paint was dry I added the trunk and branches of the tree.
And that’s how you paint watercolor trees in the distance! Hopefully, these tips will help you in your next painting session.