Making leaves on trees is extremely easy when you use a sea sponge.  Casey will show you step by step how to build up the color and use the sea sponge the correct way to make amazing trees for any season.   We love to use sea sponges from Royal Langnickel as they have small to medium pores that make great marks.  You will first start with wetting your sea sponge and squeezing it out and drying it off on your paint towel.  You will then pull out a little bit of black paint and mix it with the sap green.  It is important to use a little amount of paint.  When using the sea sponge, you need to make sure to squeeze or pinch the sponge and find a part of the sponge that you like the mark that it makes.  If you don’t like the mark, change the grip or the section of sea sponge that you are using.

When you take the sponge to the white canvas, you will start in the center of your tree.  You will start dabbing the sponge, going in circular and non-pattern movements to make the shape of your tree top.  As you go out to the edge of your leaves, you will let off your pressure so that it fades and is not a hard, dark green edge.  This step is to get the depth and darkness into your tree leaves.

Next, you will just wipe your sponge off on your paint towel and pull out a small amount of mint green on your sea sponge.  You will tap or dab your sea sponge with the mint green on top of your dark leaves paying close attention to the edges and using light pressure.  You do not want to cover up the darkness or depth.  Again, once you are happy with the mint green, you will wipe off your sponge on your paint towel. Next, you will pick up the yellow ochre color mixed with white.  This will add the highlights and also allow you to add the brightness where the light would be hitting the tree by just using a little bit of straight white on your sponge. Make sure to not cover up all of your other colors.  You want to make sure that you see the dark, mint and bright colors within your leaves as this makes your painting come to life and not look flat.

Lastly,  in order to make the trunk for the tree, you will use your smaller round brush.  You will pull out some Van Dyke brown mixed with black and then watered down three times.  You will make your trunk that goes from thicker at the bottom to thinner at the leaves.  You will add some little implications of tiny branches peeking through the leaves using your script liner brush making sure to make “Ys” for your branches and not “Ts”.   You will take your sponge and go over your little branches to break up the branches a little bit as well.  You can highlight one side of your tree to make it look more realistic.

It is extremely easy to make trees using a sea sponge and you will love learning from Casey these easy techniques that everyone can do.  This tutorial will teach you an additional technique to add to your toolbox.

Happy Painting