Today I’m sharing the progression for my last painting, ‘Falling In.’
My son asked me to paint a scary tree. With a rainy day washing out everything else, we settled into the studio and painted. All. Day. Long.
It’s huge – 24″ x 48″
Please forgive my mediocre camera.
My primary obstacle in prepping a canvas this huge: the huge amount of paint needed. I consumed an entire tube of green and a half tube of black. I watered down the paints for the middle part in a Solo cup. Then I went to work, broad stroking from the center outward. It took well over an hour. It was a pretty good arm workout!
I’d always known exactly what I wanted to do with this piece. A tree. It’s branches pulled and stretched toward an alternate dimension. I painted the trunk and fatter branches with two different broad brushes. The hardest part was yet to come.
To get the long, spiraling, skinny branches done, I broke out a tiny wedge brush and an extremely fine-point brush. It was tedious work, but I loved it. Like a demonic tail, the stretching tree limbs coiled toward the center. The blacks showed up better against the greens than I’d hoped. The hours I’d put in: well worth it.
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