Mossy maples

Mossy Maples

I finished the maple grove painting today, and have several photos of its stages of evolving.

On the dried background, the first thing I did was draw in the lines of the individual trees with a medium green.

Next I took a dark green and gave the trees their trunks, and blocked in the foreground ferns. Once their shapes were defined I added the mossy spots on them, and tested some other shades of green on the ferns.

I decided the whole painting was too low key, so I glazed over the upper background to lighten it.

The last photo I took with my iPad surprised me by making the colors more saturated than they appeared in the painting. I liked the effect so much I took pure violet and veridian and washed them over the background. I added lighter highlights on the trees and the ferns, but it still seemed way too dark, and after a while staring at it I noticed the too-dark area in the top center. So I lightened that up, and then went over the moss a few times with lighter moss green, until it looked as it had the day I saw it. It was after all the moss that had attracted me to the scene.