Go big or go home...

My art teacher, Hugh Mendes has been saying for a long time that I should paint something big.  His view is that I would benefit from painting with larger brush strokes in a more free fashion.

I took the photo top left on a recent trip to St Lucia. The contrast between the rising trunks and the streaks of lens flare appealed to me. As does the depth the canopy gives the phot.  So over the course of a month I decided to paint this photo.

The canvas I chose is a 1.2M tall and 60 cm.  Dragging it to the studio in the wind was quite a challenge and several times it almost sailed away from me.

Week two and today's task was to build up what was already there.  First though I put light yellowish paint on the blank areas of canvass.  More paint was applied particularly to the darker leaves and the tree trunks and areas of red foliage were placed into the upper canopy.  At the bottom of the picture some of the lighter parts were built up resulting in the picture left third down. 

Week three and at Hugh's suggestion decided to build up the foreground.  Using a smaller brush and intense colour I put in crescents of various shades of green as well as adding contrast to the tree trunks to more illustrate the light source.  Details were also put onto some of the pre-existing leaves.  The yellowish areas covering the blank canvas put in the week before were also knocked back by encroaching on them with green leaves. The effect of all of this was to add a greater sense of depth to the whole painting. The result was the painting bottom left.

Finally week four and I was introduced the technique known as scumbling. For this a glaze medium was mixed up.  It had to be liquid enough to produce a transparent paint but not so liquid that the paint would drip down the canvas. We opted for a combination of linseed oil, terps and a thick gloopy glaze medium. A light blue-white paint mix was produced and using a combination of brush and rag this was applied so it would concentrate in the light areas and emanate out. This produced the final result which you can see below.