Daily Painting Practice- Tree Study - part 1

Our trip to the North Woods in the fall

produced an abundance of reference material. I will be painting  trees for a long time. Inspiration is  easy to  come by when walking in the woods of Wisconsin.

 Step 1-

Start with an idea, close tree vs. distant trees. Throw in -catching the light. Sketch the idea into a pleasing composition.

 Break it down into lights and darks

 Still sketching the idea. I am holding myself back from  using thicker paint. 

It is a struggle I lost , some thicker paint did manage to sneek in there.

Step 2-

 Another battle - keeping the colors muted yet varied. Especially  shadow colors I like it when they stay very muted.  I varied the hues to add contrast and interest.. 

I went back in and muted the color again. This photo is a little washed out but  it gets the idea across. 

 To be continued. - Stay tuned for stage 2.