Christmas Tree in Forest Painting

In lesson 5 of the Learn and Master Painting course, we start by practicing with a gradient. I'm not going to bother photographing my gradient work. Then we learn how to make hard and soft edges of different types. The teacher shows many different examples of hard, soft, and lost edges and you can follow along and make your own. It is great how she takes painting step by step and I like how unlike a real class, I can go back - months later - and watch a section of the DVD painting video again.


Christmas Tree in Forest Painting by Christopher Johnson

Lesson 5 ends with the painting of an evergreen tree with other trees merging in the background. Her evergreen tree is much prettier than mine, but I guess that is to be expected.  In this painting she shows us how to use negative space around objects and we continue to practice varied strokes.  We also learn massing to create the tree in the middle of the work.