Painting Workshop: Day 4: Afternoon Tree

For the afternoon, I worked on this beautiful tree that I saw in Underhill, Vermont. The main reason for working on the tree was because it was a complex scene and I could see how well I remembered my "massing" notes.

So, I massed out the basic values like I normally would. I noticed that the area behind the tree contained a lot of trees that were fairly bright. I also remembered that, if I put full detail on the trees and did them as bright as I thought they were, they would look like they are coming forward in front of my main focal point. So, I just added more blue to their structure and then blended them out so that you knew that they were trees, but not distinct enough to make your eyes focus on them.

The longest time took on modelling the tree. Both Karen and Jack reminded me that a tree is a study of greys with hints of reds, browns, and blues/violets at various points. So, I laid down my base mass of the tree in various levels of pure grey. From there, I added some color on different parts to give it texture and interest. However, I made sure that I didn't break up the underlying mass and that the drawing of the various areas of the tree were correct.

For the foreground, I added some warmth near the bottom to bring the bottom of the picture plane closer to me. The part that Karen pointed out was that I needed to combine all of the dark shapes at the base of the grass into a single shape, rather than a lot of dots.