Recently, I’ve come across a lot of paintings online of tree shadows composed of unlikely or bold color combinations. As many of you may know from my previous posts, I love incorporating bold colors, especially through the usage of a striking tone for my underpainting. Naturally, I wanted to try out this style of painting myself!

For a couple weeks, I had a pink-toned canvas collecting dust in my studio. Eventually, I got the motivation to get the painting started! Depending on the size of the canvas, there are many times where I can get considerable progress done in my own work in just one sitting. This might have to do with me not wanting to leave the painting in a stage where I’m unsatisfied with it. That being said, the progress I will be sharing today was completed in one session. I tend to lose track of time when I’m painting, it’s one of those things for me that puts my mind on silent mode for a little bit. Everything seems to fade out and it becomes just me and the canvas. I’m estimating that this may have taken 2-3 hours, not including the time it took to tone the canvas beforehand.

The image on the left features a glimpse of my process. When I start to block in my colors, I jump around a lot and I don’t try to fully develop one area at a time. Something I really love about working with oils is the translucency you can achieve. In my experience, I find a lot of beauty in my artwork when its still in the process. The image on the right shows the stage this piece is in right now. Once I return to this painting, I’d like to add some more pale yellows into the white negative space while still preserving an overall flowy and organic quality.