Birch Forest

Welcome to the Birch Forest! Today’s post is a oil painting sketch that I’m planning on enlarging into a bigger painting.

I just finished making a batch of new panels, and have been anxious to try this long, narrow shape.  I think the birch trees in mass lend themselves quite nicely to this format.

The inspiration for this painting came from another one of my plein air paint studies.  That one was a square format, painted at mid-day.  For this new painting, I cropped way, way in, and changed the lighting to the low angel, orange glow of late evening.

I tried something different in the paint process here too.  I executed the initial drawing and layout of this landscape in shade of gray.  I painted the first layer thin, and then went back into this wet bed of paint with full color.  I’ve always loved the feeling of painting one color into another, so I’m thinking this is going to be something that will be great fun to explore and see where it takes me.