Around about Easter, I used acrylics to paint sky on a series of wooden eggs. Specifically Blue Lake and White which seems to suggest a spring/summer sky. If you don’t mix them thoroughly, you can get little streaks and variations that suggest high clouds. Anyway it worked then so I thought I’d try it again. The bits of tree are painted with gouache.

I’m continuing the theme of looking up at edges. Yesterday evening, just as the sun was going behind the house, I took a few photos of one of our back garden silver birch trees. This is based on one of those photos. This is the second painting today. The first one was on paper. It was OK but had no depth and I’m not going to include it here.

I noticed from the photo that the focus was very much on the dominant branch and the branch above it was further back and slightly out of focus and that this phenomenon gave the photo some depth. I’ve tried to replicate that in the painting. Not 100% successfully but I think a reasonably good attempt. It might have been better to extend the upper branch downwards, behind the dominant one. I didn’t think of that when I was painting it.

It’s on a tea bag, of course. The brush I used to paint the branches and leaf stems is TINY!