Painting Palms

Notes From my Tree Journal

A bit about painting palm trees

Almost all Florida landscape painters paint a lot of palm trees. Each of us has our own signature for them. Here is a little about my method.

I like to lay in the trunk height first, adding the basic shape of the canopy at the top. I then will consider that there will be a dark shadow at the top of the trunk area because of the canopy above it. I like to make that shadow area a bit purply right under the canopy. There will be a shadow on the trunk on the side away from the light. There will usually be a fair amount of texture on the trunk as well. Some areas will be broken up light and shadow.

 When I start the canopy area, I like to make a dark mass low in the canopy.  The lighter tip of the fronds will be in the area of the most sunlight. It will be a warm light green, the darker value will be cool dark greens.

There are often dead fronds hanging down from the bottom where they have not fallen off or have not been trimmed. Those are usually tan or light brown with a bit of gray here and there. They also tend to be a fairly light color except were shadows hit them.