Acrylic Seascape Painting Lesson (Pt 2) – How To Paint A Palm Tree

Lesson Transcript

Hi and welcome back to the second part of this acrylic seascape lesson series where you’ll learn how to paint a beach scene with a palm tree.

Just to give you an idea of what we are doing, the final painting will end up looking like this:

In the previous lesson, we painted a blue sky background and ocean for our beach scene. That painted looked like this:

If you missed that lesson, you can find it using the link below:

Acrylic Seascape Painting Lesson (Pt 1) – Painting A Beach Scene Sky

In this lesson, we are going to paint in the palm tree. Let’s get started!

Painting Materials

For this lesson, the paint we are going to be using are: titanium white, brilliant yellow, brilliant red, and phthalo green.

The brushes that we are going to use are: a medium flat bristle acrylic brush, and small fine detail brush.

Step 1 – Paint In Foundation Of Palm Tree

Use a pencil to sketch in the basic structure of the palm tree. We’ll put in the trunk and plan out the general lay out and direction of the stems.

Then, create a light brown-green color by mixing the white, green, yellow, and red paint.

And use your medium size brush to paint over the pencil lines we just made to create the foundation for the palm tree.

Step 2 – Add In The Leaves

Using a slightly darker shade of the same color (you can do this by adding a little yellow and red to the mixture), put in leaves on each of the stems using a criss-cross brush stroke.

Then using a bit of darker green, darken the stems a bit to make them stand out more.

Also, put some of the dark green on the under-side of the palm to suggest a shadow.

Step 3 – Paint In Shadows

Add some blue, red, and white to the paint that is already on your brush to make a light gray color.

Now use your brush to put evenly spaced marks along the trunk of the tree. This will help to create the unique bark texture of palm trees.

Also, put some of this gray color in the leaves and stem area as well. This will represents the shadows.

Step 4 – Add Yellow Highlights

Clean out your brush to get rid of the old paint.

Take some yellow (with a little bit of white) and put in some highlight on the trunk and leaves area.

This will represents the sunlight hitting the tree here and there.

Step 5 – Put In Shadow Of Palm Tree

Then dip your brush in some of the gray that we mixed earlier and use it to paint in a shadow of the palm tree on the sand.

Step 6 – Add White Hightlights

Take out our small detail brush.

Mix some white with a hint of yellow and put in some highlights on the leaves area and the trunk.

And we are all done!

Let your painting dry and we’ll see you in the third and final part of this lesson series!

Here are the links to Part 1 and 3 of this series:

Part 1

Part 3