And the trees

 

 

Now it's time to work on the close-up trees. The background should complement the these trees and not pull focus from them.

 

One of the adjustments I made from the previous post is to lighten the blue sky to the right of the right most tree. 

 

 

 

 

Background sections painted

 Once the closer trees are painted I'll revisit the sectioned background to see if there are any adjustments needed.

 

As I said at the beginning of the posts on this painting, it's complicated. But, breaking it down in sections helped me to see the next step rather than get lost in the forest.

 

 

The backlit section

 This most middle section establishes the feeling of backlighting. Now that the other sections are painted (though I always leave room for tweaking) I am playing with distance, color, and an almost washed out look from the sun.

 

 

 

More background

 

My planned order for painting the sections was left to right. 

Eh. Decided to wait on the most middle one and tackle the right side of the painting next.

I'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed and want to work on a more simple section before that middle section. 

 

The one brush method seems to be working well as it is keeping the painting looser. A too tight background will bring the image closer when it should recede.

 

 

 

 

 

  

It's Complicated

 I was stumped.

 

The concept seemed sound. The drawing went well, though it took a long time.

The board was on my easel but I didn't know where to start. My usual top down, background to foreground seemed too daunting with this piece.

 

Ah, simplify. Not the painting, but the approach.

I would break it down in to sections, broken by the towering trees.

 

Here is the start.

 

 

 For this whole section I used one brush, a flat angled brush larger than I usually use. The background has a softer feel which I like.