Work in Progress, Trees against the sunset

I haven't had much chance to paint lately, I had to go over to England before Christmas due to illness in the family and I will be over there again on Sunday. In the meantime I had the urge to paint silhouette trees against a sunset. Why, I don't know but the idea just came to me.

I have two 6x8's waiting to dry a little before photographing them to try to get the colour combinations right. I have started a larger one (24x30cm / 9.5x12inch) and want to do a larger one still after that one.

About this painting
I started without toning the canvas and initially I blocked in the trees using thin paint mixed with liquin. This allowed me to get the spacing of the trees more or less right.

This dried almost instantly and allowed me to start underpainting the sky. I went straight over the trees as I was sure I would be able to see enough of the shape to work ontop of the sky. This also has the advantage of mixing in some of the sky colour into the tree colour aiding harmony and reflected colour.

I then re-established the trees and started to get serious about the sky. I ran out of light and hope to finish tomorrow.