Tutorial by Charlotte Hird

There is no drawing to do in this painting - just let it flow.

We are using the wet into wet technique so firstly wet the paper thoroughly for the background. Drop transparent yellow and ultramarine blue and by tilting the board around you can get the colours to merge together in a soft dreamy flow of colour to make green from yellow and blue.

While the background dries, practice the techniques for painting the stems and leaves of the bamboo.

For the stem use two colours, a mix of burnt sienna and ultramarine for the dark side and sap green for the light side, or you can mix a green using transparent yellow and ultramarine.

Using a 15 - 20 mm flat brush load one corner with the dark mix, then load the other corner with the lighter green.

Paint a vertical section of the stem and at the bottom make a horizontal movement just before lifting your brush to make it darker just above and below the joins.

With practice you can achieve a rounded form for the stem with this colour loading method.

Leave a 1mm gap before starting the next section. The leaves grow out of these gaps or joins, usually a thin stalk and then a bunch of leaves.

Use a slightly different angle for each stem to look natural.

To paint the leaves use a round brush and take your time to paint each leaf - taking care to get the shape right with a point at each end.

Start the stroke with just the tip of the brush on the surface of the paper, push the brush down to fatten out the leaf shape, then taper off again to end with a thin point. Enjoy the practice and when you are ready and the background is dry you can work on the painting.

Start with light stems in the background and dark in the foreground.

Paint bunches of light leaves on the light stems, hanging down or pointing up.

When they are dry, paint darker leaves over the top, so there are a variety of tones and colours in the painting to give a feeling of spatial depth - looking into the forest.

Join everything together with some very thin stalks.