This video tip is a continuation of Diane’s project “Willamette River.” She not only shows us how to paint the background for trees and how to define fir trees but she has an important message for you.

Key Points To Consider:

• Diane is painting on a wet background.
• Load the brush properly and you are halfway there!
• Diane loads a lot of paint into the brush but doesn’t always use a lot of paint on the canvas. What? She uses the paint to mold the brush into the shape she wants it to be. It is the paint sticking together that creates the sharp chiseled edge.
• She mentions that there is an automatic pull. What she means is that if you have a thin background layer the thin paint will pull the thick paint off the brush. If the background paint is thick, that won’t happen. I was never good at Science but somehow this works.
• Notice how much more light showed up in the sky when she added the dark shapes for the trees.
• Diane always loads and uses the Fan Brush the same way. She uses the sharp edge to create a line where the tree trunk would be and then uses just the corner of the brush to add the branches.
• Even though we can learn to paint better by following a Master Painter, it is important to remember we don’t have to have every little stroke exactly like the model. Diane mentions that when we worry about matching exactly, we get ridged and restricted and our own creativity stops. Dare to let it flow!

Happy Painting!

Laurie and Dawn

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