Welcome and well done! You're now at the final part of our four part tutorial series on how to paint a forest scene after a fire in acrylics using the brush and palette knife. For this last part, get you're palette knife out and build up layers of rich highlights to create atmosphere and style. (full video)
In just 4 short lessons, we’ll create a forest after a fire scene in a playfully loose style, exploring elements of design and composition, brushed and palette knife backgrounds, build a picture with trees and logs and create that wow effect with palette knife highlights.
Follow along to the step by step instructions or take your own road and alter, add, remove or change to make it your own. You may want to follow along at first and then paint another that is more reflective of you.
There is a video for each part along with extra tips and handy hints in each post with a written outline of each video at the bottom of the page, similar to a transcript but not as detailed.
Discover what materials you need and recap part 1
Learn...
- How to plan out your design
- Composition and design basics using a square canvas
- Getting the most from a limited colour palette
- How to blend lighter colours into a back ground
- Easy ways to paint trees and lines
- Using a palette knife to give atmosphere to your work
- Value differences that give depth to your artwork
- How to fix compositional elements that don’t work
- Knowing when your finished
In this forth lesson, we’ll be adding highlights with the palette knife, learning how to build up different colour values to give a richness to the highlights that can be appreciated from up close and far away. Don’t forget to look out for the extra tip on colour harmony at the bottom of the page.
Video 4 Complete painting with highlights
Video 4 Outline
Adjust Lighting
Make adjustments to your painting that create a more subtle look. If it feels too light, paint in some slightly darker areas like I’ve done here or conversely, if you feel it looks to dark, add a shade or two of your lighter colours. Keep the integrity of the hero section with the light source. I’m just adding depth around it.
Remember to take a step back from your work from time to time and gain a different perspective.
I’m adding more trees as the scene feels a little bare. I’ve added an extra feature tree near the light source/hero but I’ve made it very light and blue so it stands out.
Use thin brushes for thin trees.
Palette Knife Work
Make sure your work is dry before adding paint with the palette knife. Try different sized palette knifes with different shapes.
I’ll be using a long palette knife with straight edges to work with our tall trees.
I like working with my canvas upside down when using the palette knife when adding to the top half of the painting.
Building up Highlights
Start by creating colours close to those in the tree your working with but just a little lighter.
If you’ve mixed your colours with a palette knife (recommended), wipe it clean and gently cover one side with your desired colour, making sure the other side, facing you is clean (as shown in the video). This will avoid big lumps of paint being deposited in places you don’t want them.
With some paint on the under surface of your palette knife, place the straight edge only against the the side of the tree where the light is coming from. I like to place this first mark slightly inward from the edge so I can still see the darker outline of the tree. Holding your place on the edge, gently sweep the palette knife across the tree to deposit the paint. I like to move across the width of the tree to varying degrees. My darker highlights will cover maybe ¾ of the width in one particular area where as brighter highlights may only cover a third or less for the very bright ones.
Let the lumps and bumps in the layers of paint and the canvas create spontaneous patterns in your highlights.
Keep adding highlights from darkest to lightest.
Always add highlights that are lighter than the tree they are being placed on. This means that lighter trees will start with quite light highlights.
Keep looking for areas where the flow isn’t happening. I’ve add a few touches of the violet from the bottom parts of the painting to some of the darker trees in the top half to create a colour flow for the eyes being careful not to balance the top and the bottom with equal amounts. I want the painting to have different rooms or quadrants that are different to each other but still flow together.
I use a light coverage of paint on my palette knife applied with very light pressure for the lightest of highlights.
Watch to the end of the video to learn how I added final touches.
Extra Tips
Add a little of each of the colour highlights to other trees where the colours may not match exactly, but a very small amount can create colour harmony and flow to your work.
You may need to wait for each highlight layer to dry before moving ahead with the next. This will depend on how warm your working area is. Layers in acrylics rarely take more then 24 hours to dry.
(Some of this video is voiced over, other parts have instructions on the right hand side.)
What next?
I hope you've enjoyed completing our forest after a fire painting in acrylics.
At the end of this video series you may find improvement in your proficiency with
- Blending and mixing colours
- Composing paintings
- Use of the palette knife
Keep experimenting, dabbling and playing without being concerned about an outcome.
Try recreating this painting using different colours. For a challenge, blindly choose 3 colours from your paint bag, add white and black and give it a go. How would you use the new colours to create atmosphere?
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Other videos in the series
Paint a forest scene in acrylics part 1