Evergreen Trees Watercolor Demonstrations

Be sure to scroll down to watch all FOUR watercolor demonstrations!

Exploring Light & Shadow Using Color

In this tutorial, we're playing with color to bring our evergreen tree to life. We start with a green base and introduce red, yellow, and blue to create a range of tones that will help us depict light and shadow on the tree.

Notice how the red desaturates the bright green, the yellow warms it up, and the blue adds a deeper, cooler shade.

  1. Starting with a green-yellow mix, paint a vertical line and use upward, sweeping brushstrokes to create the initial shape of the branches along your line. As you move downward, extend each branch a little longer to create a natural taper.

  2. Mix red into your color mix to create some midtones. Apply this darker color to the underside of the branches where shadows naturally occur.

  3. Add a touch of blue to your green mixture to darken the undersides of the branches.

    Always keep your light source in mind! In this painting, the light is coming from a downward angle from the left. This means the branches on the left side will be lightest, where the light hits most directly, while the branches on the right side will be darkest, as they are in shadow..

  4. Finally, we’ll create the tree trunk. Mix red, yellow, and blue to form a brown tone for the trunk. Using the same colors throughout your piece helps create unity and a harmonious feel in the artwork.

Simple Evergreen Trees

Here I’ve painted a few simple evergreen trees using various techniques to capture their unique shapes and textures. While I’m working with watercolors, these principles can be applied to other mediums as well (markers or colored pencils).

Whether you're looking to up your Christmas tree game or illustrate specific evergreen species in your nature journal, these demonstrations will help improve your technique.

Here I’m using short, downward brush strokes to create the classic Christmas tree shape. These strokes mimic the natural texture of an evergreen tree’s needle-like branches. As I move downward, I gradually taper the strokes to form the tree's natural silhouette. If you're having trouble visualizing the shape, you can always start by sketching a simple triangle to help guide the placement of the branches.

For this one, I'm using more horizontal brush strokes that curve slightly upward as I move further down the tree. Note that I’ve kept the upper branches a little more sparse, gradually making them fuller as we move toward the base.

Here I’m starting with short strokes that depict branches growing at an upward angle. Then I then gradually adjust to horizontal, and ultimately downward, with an upward swooping stroke toward the base.