This time, I wanted to paint in acrylics. Instead of following a YouTube tutorial, I decided that I wanted to come up with something original. That is, I wanted to follow the layers of a tutorial but paint something different.

So, I went with a classic evergreen reflection. I started off by mirroring whatever I was painting in the upper half of the paper into the lower half. The sky gradient went well. It looked a little patchy but smooth at the same time which was the look that I was going for.

Next up, Pine trees far away. Firstly, I mixed colours wrong. I was going for a “Purplish-Blue” but ended up with a “Bluish-Purple”. I decided to go for it since I was a fan of that shade when it came to watercolours.

That was a really bad decision. It looked downright gaudy. The trees weren’t straight, the line dividing the horizon was wonky and it didn’t look realistic at all. So, I thought that if I carefully paint the trees up front, will anyone notice the mess in the back?

I looked up an image of pine trees on google and observed that the tapering leaves went about each side in a zig-zag way. So, I got to painting the main shape with a darker green. I mirrored the trees in the lake in a wonkier fashion. For it to look like a reflection. It started to look weird, but I kept my hopes up.

It started coming to life as I painted the highlights in a lighter green and lime green. I then toned the colours down to paint the reflection which was a really good idea.

Finally, after painting little waves in the lake, the painting looked amazing! You didn’t even notice the messed up pine trees at the back! This is how it looked: