Start to Finish

I start with what is most in the foreground... in this case, it is the paintbrush flowers.  Then, the birch trees.  They were fun.  I love creating shapes with paint and leaving the black underpainting showing through in areas to hint at branches, burls, rough bark and shadows.  



Then, I work on the sky.  It is difficult for me to paint a plain blue sky.  I LOVE the wind, the movement of the clouds and I think that comes through in most of my paintings.  I have observed that the sky is lightest on the horizon and darker overhead and I enjoy painting the gradients of the colour of the sky in sections... each separated by a line of the black underpainting.

Finally, I erase the chalk lines, then add little bits of shape to fill in areas where I feel too much of the black is showing.  I draw the trees down into the foliage with small white shapes, and the lake down as well with the same idea.  

Now, I sign it... and go over it once again, touching up areas that I feel need touching up.  In a couple days, I will add a coat of varnish and I will be done.  

For me, the first step to any painting is a good sketch.  As I sketch, I pull out memories from my mind and they unravel in my sketchbook.  Most of the time, I start with trees.  I explore different types of bark, lines, shapes, foliage etc.  Once in a while, I nail the sketch on the first try, but more often, I sketch until what I see on paper is what I am feeling/seeing inside. 

The next step for me is deciding what background colour I will paint my canvas.  In this case I went with black.  Once I paint the canvas black, I do a very rough drawing of my painting with chalk.  When I say rough, I mean very rough... just an idea of where things should be.  Then I start to paint.

At some point here I decided to add leaves which were not in my original sketch... i like the effect.  Then I painted the lake, and distant mountains.  

The blue I chose for this painting is Cobalt blue... one I do not normally use, but I was wanting to try something other than my usual Pthalo blue.  The greens were mixed from Cad yellow, and Cobalt blue, the purple was straight Dioxazine purple and I needed some white and black to "grey" things down in some areas.  The reds were a mix of Cad. red, and Quinacridone crimson.