With today being Christmas Eve what could be more fitting than a painting of a Christmas tree? First I splattered masking fluid onto the paper for snow and some of the tree ornaments.
Once the masking fluid was dry I lightly sketched in the trunk and the main branches for the tree.
Just before I was ready to paint in the background I decided I should mask out the tinsel on the tree first.
After the masking fluid had dried the background was painted in using cobalt blue. The Christmas tree was painted using various mixtures of French ultramarine blue, raw sienna, Antwerp blue and burnt sienna.
The painting was then aside to dry completely before removing the masking fluid.
Once the masking fluid was removed it was time to paint all the Christmas ornaments on the tree.
First I mixed up a blue grey with French ultramarine blue, Antwerp blue a little burnt sienna and painted the tinsel.
I wanted to have a number of different coloured ornaments so I started to paint a couple of them with cadmium yellow.
Next I changed the colour by adding a little alizarin crimson.
I added a little cobalt blue to the mix for a couple darker coloured red ornaments.
Next I used pure cobalt blue in various places and followed that by adding a little new gamboge for some green ornaments. I painted the remaining ones with pure cadmium red.
I decided that I wanted to add a Christmas star to the painting and used cadmium yellow since it is opaque and will cover most transparent colours.
If you would like more information about ACEO please go to my post on 11 March 2010.
The ACEO shown here is an original watercolour painting using Artist quality Winsor & Newton paint on 140lb. Arches 100% rag, acid free watercolour paper.It is priced at $20.00 and sold unframed.
