As they grow older, olive trees become gnarled and sprawling, making them visually impressive. Although it is good to study olive trees before beginning a painting of one, it is not necessary to paint an olive tree from a live subject. In fact, olive trees often defy expectations with their fabulous appearance. The older an olive tree gets, the more it looks like a specimen from Lord of the Rings.
Instructions
1. Study pictures of olive trees. Pick one picture as your subject, or if desired, proceed from imagination.
2. Choose a medium. Acrylic paint and oil paint are thick, opaque mediums usually applied to a primed canvas. These types of paints may be layered on a canvas again and again. The primary difference between oil paint and acrylic paint is the drying time--acrylic paint dries much more quickly and this, consequently, makes blending colors more problematic. Oil paints dry very slowly.
Watercolor, on the other hand, is often transparent. It is applied in layers to special watercolor paper. Unlike acrylic and oil paint, which can be used to cover up any mistakes on the canvas, it can be nearly impossible to correct errors with watercolor paint (because each layer will show something of the layer beneath it).
3. Paint the trunk first with a large or medium-sized brush. Start from the base of the tree and work your way up. Note that there will be a number of fluctuations in the surface of the tree. It will appear almost to be rippled on the surface, with the ripples moving up the tree into the branches, where they smooth out dramatically.
4. You may want to switch to a slightly smaller brush. Allow the trunk to split at the branches. Paint the base of the thickest branches but do not follow the branches too far up in the tree.
5. With a medium-sized brush and a green paint tinged with blue and brown, paint thick tufts of leaves that hide the view of the branches. The strokes for these tufts of leaves will be short and almost furry-looking.
6. With a fine detail brush, soak up paint that is a variation of the green that you just used for the leaves (a lighter green will give the leaves the appearance of reflecting daylight, and a darker green will represent leaves that have receded into shadows.) Now use the detail brush to paint clumps of small swift strokes in the leaves, to represent individual leaves.
7. Repeat Step 6, but this time use a dark green (if for Step 6 you used a light green), or if you used a dark green in the last step, use a light green now. This will give the appearance that the leaves have depth and body.
8. Add shadow and highlights to the ripples and gnarls in the trunk.
