How to Paint Peaceful Stream in Oils

Lightly sketch in the main parts of the scene.  Watercolour pencil works well for this purpose.

Mix the colours you will need for the trees and ground.  Prepare midtones, highlights, and shadow tones.

Roughly spread your dark green colour as an underpainting around the trees shapes in the upper part of the painting.  Over that, create an interesting textured background by applying some dabs and dashes of the next lightest green to suggest some foliage.

Beginning with your darkest ground colour, block in the ground areas in the foreground.  Add more dark to the paint if necessary.  Move on to applying the lighter browns.  In the upper background, brush on some rough patches of ground in various tones.

Scrub in the grass tones between and on the ground colours.  Note the brush stroke Nolan uses to effect grasses.

Begin to use darker colours as you move forward.  Change your brush stroke as you begin adding bush shapes.  Using a dabbing motion, use lighter tones to build up texture in the bushes.  Create lots of contrast in front and very-low contrast off in the distance.

Mix your tree tones for midtones, highlights, and shadows.  Slowly thin down your paint as you will need it to flow over previously painted spots.

Use your darkest tree colour to block in the silhouette of the trees.  Add in some smaller trees in the distance.  Now apply the midtone tree color as your highlight using Nolan's technique with a rigger brush to create texture.   Continue by adding branches, complete with highlights.

Use your preferred method to transfer the template to the canvas.  Cover the leaf and ladybug with a product such as Clear Cover to protect them before painting the background.

Use Nolan's tapping technique to apply leaves to the trees in the background, then add highlights.

Thin the tree paint.  Use the darkest tone to fill in the outside bottom edge of the tree.  Then paint in the mid-tone and highlight colours.   Roughly blend them together to give the bark effect.

Create a bit of texture on the embankment to the left of the tree.

Using your remaining colours, squiggle on those that are reflecting onto the water.  Be sure the correct colours are reflecting in the appropriate places.  Now use short vertical strokes to make the water look shiny, then use horizontal strokes to make the water appear to be flowing.  Apply a light tone to edge off your water with ripples.

Fill in the remaining foreground with your darkest green.  Flick out some grasses with a hardware brush.  Add highlights.  End by creating some individual blades of grass with Nolan's technique of using no paint.

There are many tips in this lesson.  One, in particular, is Nolan's demonstration of how to make a “chisel point” when loading your paint brush.  It can be used for drawing small lines, such as tree branches and twigs.