Painting masses of trees is often very difficult to represent in watercolor without spending hours with tiny brushes and multiple glazes.  Here I offer a way of representing a mass of distant evergreens, using only a base wash and one other wash over it.  It is fairly simple to do, not too tedious, and provides very satisfactory results.

This was done on Fabriano Cold Press and is 12 X17, but it obviously will work with any good paper and any size painting or portion of a painting.  Paints are M. Graham.  Colors are Sap Green, Burnt Sienna, Phtalo Blue, and Neutral tint.

Step one:  Make your mixtures for your base wash.

The main pigment I used is Sap Green darkened with Neutral Tint. To the side of this, and lightly mingled with the edges of it, I put Burnt Sienna and Phtalo Blue.  The blue gives me a cooler, brighter green, and the Burnt Sienna gives a warmer, more neutral green.  Note that the Burnt Sienna and Phtalo Blue also will mix together to form a nice evergreen color.  All of these colors will be randomly mixed, mingled, tweaked, and dropped in organically as the painting proceeds.  The result will be a good variety of warm and cool greens.

 

 

Step 2:  Lay in the base wash.

Step 2a:  With clear water, thoroughly wet the entire area where the mass of trees will be.  Take a large brush (I used a 1" flat mop), and gently brush and drop in the colors, constantly varying them.

 

 

Step 2b:  While this wash is still wet, take a smaller brush (I used a 1/4" flat turned on edge), dampen it slightly, and gently pull up on the top edge of the wash into the dry area to create tree tops sticking up out of the forest.  Don't be tedious.  Make them quickly and randomly.

 

Step 3:  Leave.  Don't even think about going back.  Don't do it!  Ahhh....ahhh...turn around, put down the brush and step away from the table....everything will be okay. Good, now have a cup of tea while the wash dries

 

Step 4: Make your mixtures for your second wash.  Mix them just as you did in step 1, but make the mixes thicker and darker with a bit more neutral tint.  M. Graham's neutral tint is transparent and doesn't lighten very much on drying, so I prefer it.  Of course, you can use any method that you prefer for darkening your colors.

 

Step 5:  Define a tree group.   This is where you define the rest of the trees in the forest.  You will be using negative painting here, painting the dark shadow areas around the visible trees.  Here's how:

 

Step 5a.  Use a #4 - #6 round, and with clear water, wet an area that roughly defines the shadow area behind a tree group.  You have to imagine this in your head, but it's not as hard as it sounds.  After you lay in a couple of these, the others will be easier to visualize.  Look at the pictures here and at the final painting to get an idea of what I mean.

 

 

Step 5b.  Put the tip of the brush down at the bottom of the wetted area.  Now paint small downward strokes into the dry paper.  Move your brush  as if painting around little tree shapes.  Make the shapes different widths and heights.  Keep them varied.  The top of your stroke should blend into the clear water and create a soft, indiscreet edge.

 

 

Step 5c.  Before the area has dried, rinse your brush and remove some of the moisture by touching it to a paper towel.  Then, gently brush away the left and right edges of the area you just painted.  Also soften a few of the little strokes sticking out of the bottom of the area that you just painted.

 

 

Step 6:  Continue with the above steps, defining more and more masses of trees.

 

 

Here is the forest completed.  Notice that at this point, without any context, this could just as well be a bunch of bushes, or thick grass.  In other words, by small changes in color and brushstrokes, this method can be used to paint any type of massed foliage, not just trees.

 

 

Now I just add a few bare trunks sticking up, and bung in a background to give it some context, and I have a huge forest:

Obviously, you could add more tree masses, tone variations, and/or layers to continue the detail to the level that you want.

I hoped you enjoyed this demo.  As usual with word describing painting, it sounds much more difficult than it really is.   Give this a shot.  It's very useful, fairly quick, it can be done on any size area, and its lots of fun.