Birch Tree Painting Using an App

The app I used to create my painting

In addition to using YouTube videos to teach me how to paint, I also decided to find some apps for my phone to teach me how to paint. After searching in the app store “acrylic painting tutorials”, I was overwhelmed with the number of apps. After scrolling through some of them, I decided to download “Acrylic Painting Tutorials: 170 Video Lessons”. I figured with that many lessons, there had to be a few that I would enjoy! After I downloaded the app, I was very overwhelmed. The videos are not sorted into any order. They are just there, all 170 of them. I started scrolling through the videos, reading the titles and found “How to paint trees with a credit card”.

I’ve taped the trees using masking tape

I was very intrigued by this as I was using something other than a paintbrush to paint. I watched the tutorial and was not thrilled with how they did the background (they just put random colours on). I figured that since last week I had been learning how to paint a sunset, I would give a sunset background a try. I followed the video up until they started doing the background. The first part of the video involved “taping” your trees; taking masking tape and taping where your trees were so that the paint didn’t get on the white. After taping, I went on YouTube to find a video about blending colours to make a sunset. I found this video and used it to help me make my sunset:

After I finished painting, this is what it looked like (at this point I was very concerned- it did not look too appealing):

I’ve painted the sunset with the tape still on

I then had to take the tape off (there was something really satisfying about taking the tape off and having perfectly straight lines..). I also had to find an old card to begin painting the trees. I found one and before starting on my canvas, took a piece of paper and practiced how I would make the trees. There is a technique that I needed to practice; getting a reasonable amount of paint on the card and then setting it on the outside of the tree and pulling it into the middle of the tree. I was very glad I first tried it on the paper and it took a few practice tries.

Here is the finished product:

The finished product!

Overall, I am extremely happy as to how it turned out. I am glad that I modified the painting to have a sunset background (I think it looks really good). In terms of the app that I used to help me paint, I was satisfied with it, but not overly excited. It was essentially a compilation of videos but they did not have any order as to how they were sorted. This was frustrating for me. Once I found the video, I was happy, but finding the video was very tedious. I wish there was a picture beside each title of the painting, illustrating what the final product would look like. I will most likely use the app again because the tutorials are very thorough and well done.