Tree and Hillside (Oil Bar Painting as of January 7, 2015)

This morning I worked on this oil bar painting that I started a few days ago. This painting is based on photos I took in October at Appleton Farms, in Ipswich, MA. You can see my photo references are posted here (Jan. 2 and 3). I have been thinking hard about this painting because I would like the way the tree meets the top border to be softer than in the photo and I have be trying to figure out how to do that. I think I need to bring in the tree a bit, make it just a bit more compact but without making it feel small. Today I decided to approach the problem by roughing in the sky. It's not a bad idea to get the background in, especially when your are going to paint foliage over it. But although blue was the only color I used today, I wasn't really working on the sky. I was working on the tree, making subtle changes in size and shape. (The tree now looks a bit smaller than it is really going to be once I add the foliage.)