Over 30 years of visiting with my family at the summer lake house, I’ve been enjoying the view. Looking from the boat dock, you could see this beautiful oak tree growing right out on the end of a neighbor’s lot. As this tree got bigger and taller through the years, I took even more notice, saying to myself, ‘I’ve got to paint this scene!’

A couple of years back, I was sitting on the dock looking at the oak, the water was still reflecting the whole Point, and that was the moment. I took several photos that day, trying different angles, but it came down to just this one great spot from the dock.

Featured watercolor palette:

Drawing the view

I used the grid system to enlarge the photograph on to a full sheet of watercolor paper. I spent a full day getting the drawing just right. My main focus was to get all those holes drawn up in the tree foliage so that you can see through to the sky behind. The other important feature was drawing the reflections of the tree and boat dock in the water.

Painting the sky, background and masking the main features

Using masking tape for some of the larger areas and DANIEL SMITH Masking Fluid to mask small areas, I covered the boat dock and dock poles, the shore line, and the house up above the oak tree. I painted the sky with Cerulean Blue, blending down to a slight touch of Opera Pink and finally a hint of Hansa Yellow Medium at the horizon. Then with a cool blue-green mix, I painted the far hills across the lake.

Water reflections

Using the masking fluid and following my pre-drawn horizontal lines of the reflections, I preserved the white paper where I want my lightest values of the water. I used a combination of the masking tape and the liquid masking for the long vertical left edge of the reflection. I then dived into the painting with a flat 1” sable brush, while remembering as I go, that I always paint water reflections darker than the item being reflected.

I generally do the water in two stages, first the darkest values, let it dry, then remove the masking, and finally a lighter value of blue quickly right over the darker values I’ve just painted. I go back and carefully drop in the colors from the dock reflected in the water.Then I masked the small and larger see-through holes in the major trees. I also masked the white house behind the trees on the right side. This process probably took more than an hour of using the fluid applicator with clear plastic tips to make lots of small dots.

Foliage

I covered my finished water areas with paper, knowing that I’m going to be working above that area for quite awhile. Next I laid in the tree foliage and different green values with the lightest warm greens at the upper left of each mass. Deep Sap Green is the best base color for trees that I’ve ever used! I also used quite a bit of the Serpentine Genuine for lighter areas. I like to add Phthalo Blue into the shade areas of leaf masses. When most of the major foliage was finished, I painted the trunks and branches and a few individual leaves with a #4 fine point sable brush.

Final steps

I finished all the tree greens, trunks and limbs, waited for everything to completely dry, then removed all the masking fluid to reveal the hundreds of holes showing sky color through the trees. Even the little chair with fishing pole on the far seawall was revealed. If you feel that there are too many holes , all you have to do is paint them over. The final stage is to remove all the tape and paint in the boat dock and covered boat and seawall.