Tall trees against the blue sky, oil painting

Sky Reach by Marion Hedger

Palette knife painting

30x60cm (12"x24") oil on box canvas

Contact me about this painting via email

Read the step by step process here

The days are warming up and the sun is shining. Spring is definitely in full flow with the daffodils and the early irises blooming. We had a lovely walk this morning along the river. The plane trees have not started to bud up and still stand majestically proud against the bright blue winter sky. Unfortunately, I had no camera with me but I did wonder how I could capture those tall trees on a canvas.

The painting above is one I painted last year. It is of a cork tree not a plane tree, but maybe I could follow the same format. Do you think this would work for winter trees?

This older photo of a different part of  the rive gives you some idea of how tall the trees are.

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.

Contact me about this or any other painting HERE

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!