Tips for Painting Trees in Watercolour

One of our members Dani sent in her picture with a request for some advice on painting trees. Dani says:

This weekend I started a painting of a mountain and some trees from my homeplace. I begun with the sky and mountain and the tree to the left. So far I was very pleased, but when I came to middle trees above the water I became totally lost. It was very frustrating not beeing able to complete this painting and I was humbly hoping for your advice on painting the typical scandinavian forrest on medium lenght.I do realize that you probably get a lot of requests and therefor perhaps don't have time to help me on the subject and if that is the case it's allright, you have helped me alot already.I have attached the painting and original picture and the type of trees and distance I'm talking about is the one's above the river/water.- Dani

First of all the mountain and the distant detail should be subdued this will help the forward trees to stand out. If you check the original photo you will see the these distant areas are feint as opposed to the stronger detail in the forward trees. To achieve this effect the sky colours should be brought down to the forward tree line, minus the clouds. The mountains a distant detail is the applied on top of this application. There are many examples of this procedure in the videos on the site.Dani can't alter her current painting now though so I would suggest that she continues with the trees and do the best she can following other examples of foliage from my videos.