Cork Tree Work in Progress - stage 3 Leaves

Adding the leaves using mixtures of ultramarine blue, ocean blue, cadmium yellow light and titanium white and the occassional touch of yellow ochre pale.
Because of the underpainting white used, the sky was nearly dry but still tacky. The texture caused by the use of the Ti white and a large palette knife the paint broke up nicely. I never thouroughly mix my paint so there is always variation in the colour.

More leaves, getting lighter and more yellow at the bottom.

After adding a few more wispy leaves to give recession, I reworked some parts of the sky. I removed the green at the bottom by going over it with a light blue to indicate some cloud. At first I thought I would put in a lower tree line, but I now feel this is unneccesary.

See WIP stage 2 HERE

Is it finished?
Time to put it aside and ponder about it for a while. Does it need more leaves? some purple? more twigs?
What do you think?

Cork Tree Work in Progress stage 2

Adding the highlights using yellow ochre pale mixed with white for the lightest highlights, and YOP mixed with alazarin crimson for the secondary highlights

Most of the shadows added using ultramarine blue and UB with alazarin crimson.
I like the turquoise from the underpainting that's peeping through in places and I think I will keep those.

The next step is to start on the foliage. I am pleased with the structure of the tree.

Next update tomorrow.

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Re-purposed canvas - Cork Tree work in progress

Cork Tree (Working Title) Work in Progress
Stage 1

Oil palette knife painting

30x60 cm 12x24 inch

It's iris time again. Every year we take a trip over to an iris nursery near Hyeres. It's quite a trip so we usually take the opportunity to travel around and take in a some of the countryside. This year was no exception. Part of our travels takes us through the Maures national park which is full of oak cork trees and sweet chestnut trees. I always take loads of photos, of course, and plenty of the cork trees.

We last went around this area last September and I painted this cork tree painting

 Cork Sentinels available in my Etsy shop

About Today's Painting

For today's painting I needed a long canvas. I had a 30x60 cm canvas with a partly  painted lily on it. I lost interest in the lily and it has been sitting on my 'to be finished pile' for about 2 years. As it was only as far as the underpainting stage the acrylic layer was quite thin and made an ideal surface for painting my cork tree. 

 

Stage 1

I wiped a thin layer of linseed oil over the canvas before mapping out the shape of the tree. After roughly indicating the outline of the tree I filled in the sky spaces. I used a mixture of ultramarine blue, ocean blue and white which was a mixture of underpainting white, this dries super fast, and titanium white. My intention was to start darker at the top, move through to light blue and indicate more cloud at the bottom. I also paid attention to the sky spaces making sure they were all different shapes and sizes and all abstract. I wasn't too fussed about covering all of the old painting - perhaps the colour peeping through would add 'something'.

It's funny, but I find the effect of the old painting on the tree trunk oddly interesting!