85/100 tiny painting challenge for 2026 (Patreon)

Fall tree for #85! In today's tutorial, we are using our masking fluid on top of watercolor. This is a great way to paint your first layer and then save it while you freely paint a background. You can paint this one without masking fluid, but it requires a lot of negative painting around the light bright leaves to form them. By using masking fluid instead, you get to "paint" the leaves and details of the tree with masking fluid and then paint the background right over the top. This helps our background stay loose and fuzzy for the distant trees because we don't need to painstakingly worry about saving the leafy details while we paint the background. I can't wait to see how you do with this one. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Paper: arches 140 lb cotton 9X12" paper that I've cut into 3X3" pieces, giving me 12 pieces per page.

Masking: Winsor and Newton pigmented masking fluid

Paint: For this project I am using a split primary palette. All colors are Winsor and Newton, except the manganese is Holbein - cad yellow deep, lemon yellow, cad red, perm. rose, ultramarine blue, manganese, indigo and sap green. The colors I'm using today are - cad yellow, lemon yellow, cad red, perm rose, sap green and ultramarine blue.

Brushes: round 4 & 10 - Princeton

Private youtube link to watch if you need captions or translation: https://youtu.be/sIFygbtwYvU