Amber Glow, Autumn trees oil painting - work in progress

Following on from yesterday, here is the progress and some process pics along the way.

Amber Glow, Autumn Trees WIP

Oil on canvas sheet

24x30cm (approx 10"x12")

Started with a brush and finished with a palette knife

I still have to do some finishing touches to this - the lower part of the tree trunk doesn't look right and I think I need more depth under the trees in the background. I also need to push the middle autumn foliage back. If anyone can see anything else that needs a change, please leave a comment.

Here are some WIP pics
Stage 1

I started with a pink acrylic ground and very roughly blocked in some of the masses. I didn't block them in completely as I want to leave quite a bit of the pink background showing through. This block in gives me an indication of where the lights and darks will go. As you can see, I started on the sky before I remembered to take a pic.

Stage 2

Blocking in with local colour, trying to maintain the cool verses the warm balance. I used viridian, pink and blue (all mixed with lots of titanium white) for the sky.
Stage 3

More blocking in and starting to break up the masses. I used more pure titanium white over the colours of the sky. Because it is wet-in-wet some of it blended, but I did not blend all over (I was tempted though!)

Here is a close-up of the sky