Painted this Sunday at Alta Lake. Just chilled. Didn’t focus on composition, only getting accurate Sierra greens. As per other posts, I’ve struggled with this color (especially pine trees), so am taking the time to do some simple studies.
I learned in this study that my greens have been too cool and chromatic. There’s a lot of Hansa Yellow Orange in these greens, Ultramarine Blue, and then some Fire Red to kill the chroma.
The greens look vibrant to me Ed. You must be on the right track. I also have a feeling that being creative with colour can help the greens.
I wonder about value. I mean, not the value of the trees itself, but the value in the trees, in the greens, so that eventually each tree is unique and at the same time part of a group. Thinking that careful values would bring the tree alive and thereby also the green. But I realise that is hard when time is limited.
Bart, I’m not sure I follow your comment. Is it that you think I should vary the value between trees to seperate more?
I think your greens are nice in this painting. I find that when painting pine trees (more that other types of trees), that the greens lean more toward red than you would expect. It’s easy to make them too cool – I always end up using a lot of orange and red to make mine warn enough, just like you did here. I always end up using ultramarine blue, cad yellow, and alizarin or cad orange, depending on what I’m after.
Who am I to say that Ed! 🙂
But ..uhm.. yeah..I am thinking of making each tree more or less unique by looking at each tree as an individual, so taking care to watch the values of the line of trees but also of each separate tree -and I actually mean in the tree itself. In that way you might create a tension in the greens, variation within the theme.
I “messed up” the line of trees in my photo editing program, put some of the darker greens from the outside of the row in the middle, removing some of the highlights with it. Thought that it helped to create a different -more specific – rhythm, and it accentuated colour more strongly and in different places than I saw before.