Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Sycamore Tree

I'm still learning to paint sycamore trees. Here, I've concentrated on mainly the trunk area only because I was drawn to the dark shadows of the foliage along the ground at this meadows edge. I really like dark shadows in a painting and do that mainly with the lower portions of my eucalyptus trees.

This is the initial block in of colors. Normally I paint my sky and then everything working in order towards the foreground. For this painting I blocked everything in first.


Here you can see more of the blocking of the trunks. I grab a soft brush dipped in turpentine and basically draw the trees. This takes the paint off in those areas and I wipe with a dry brush to dry up the canvas. After that is dry I then paint in the trunk colors.




Here you can see the basic foliage taking place. I start with the darkest and work to the lightest.


Here the painting was done but I didn't like the tree placement...so I added another tree trunk using the same method as the other trunks. I also did not like the branch in front of the trunks so I took it out.



In the end, this is what my finished painting looked like. Trees further to the left and small foliage adjustments that I'm happy with.


2 comments:

Marian Fortunati said...

WOW..
I love this demo... JUST BEAUTIFUL!

Ron Guthrie said...

Hi Marion,
Demo's are a great way to see how a painting comes together. Too often though I forget to take pics with the camera once the painting gets going, haha.

Still, it is fun to go back and look at the stages and think "Whew...glad that came out ok!" Thanks.
Ron