Trees at Art Group

This weeks topic was trees at Avon Valley art group'


I prepped the painting the evening prior to the meeting by brushing the background of s piece of 500g paper with gesso, leaving it thicker in places to give some texture.
I then used some fine threads taken from the bundles shown in the previous post to form the undergrowth and the textured tree trunk. I left this to dry completely overnight.


At the meeting, I used Indian yellow to give the middle highlight and when this was dry, wet the paper with a laundry spray, and dropped in a variety of browns and golds to produce the painting. The paint collects along the fine threads and produces thin darker lines of tangled bracken etc.
I used brown and black acrylic ink for the darkest areas, and added a few extra seed heads in the fore ground.

This did not take as long as I had expected, so to fill the time, I borrowed some paper from a fellow painter and using wet-in-wet
, I painted, without drawing a study of trees and bluebells. Not my finest hour, but very good fun to do.

I rarely do my best work at the group, but I try to use the time to experiment with various paints and associated media, and the sessions are always great fun and often educational. Members have lots of lovely ideas. It is always a treat to see their work.