Painting A Japanese Maple In Watercolor

A practical guide to painting a tree with beautiful red foliage

Painting a Japanese maple in its full splendor is a pleasurable challenge. The plethora of red foliage appears to make it a simple subject; the test for the painter is to attempt to incorporate other color variations into the work. In this painting, to give variety to the red paint, I’ve used some yellow ocher and ultramarine blue. The full range of colors used here are:

• Cadmium red
• Ultramarine blue
• Chromium green
• Yellow ocher
• Burnt umber
• Black

After making a brief sketch of the basic outline of the tree, I started by painting in the outer foliage where the colors are at their brightest. Working with watercolours, I always suggest keeping the detail to a minimum, letting the texture of the paint do the work of portraying the finer details of the tree.

Working downwards into the body of the tree, I tried to bring in other colors — dashes of blue, brown and green — to suggest shadow and give variety to the color tones. With the paint still wet, the different tones blend nicely into each other.

The key to a successful painting in watercolor is to move quickly. This does pose a challenge: one of the trickiest aspects of watercolor is how unforgiving it is on mistakes. Generally speaking, you get one chance to laden your brush with paint and commit it to paper. Erasing it is almost impossible and over-painting is often counter-productive.

In that spirit, paint with confidence and be happy to let the picture take its own shape. Accidents will happen, so let them come and welcome them to the picture.

Next, begin applying darker shades of paint over lighter shades. This works best when the watercolor paint is dry. To maintain realism, think about…