A commission of a large tree

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Just when I was grateful for the warm sunny weather, it has changed.
I woke up this morning to a snow storm. The sky was dark and milky gray.
It had eventually cleared up and the sky had brightened up later in the day.

In the studio I continued to work on some of the commissioned pieces.
I started the day by working on the tree above and finished the day by working on a new piece from the series of twelve landscape paintings that I am doing for a prominent Florida collector.

At first the tree above posed a bit of a challenge for me.
I decided to paint the foreground with greens and yellows and to insert patches of colors in light magenta-purple as impressions of flowers.

When I was done, it looked flat. So I added some highlights in white and pale yellows.
It still looked flat and uninteresting.
I added some medium red and deep orange to the flowers and many more tones of green to the grass around the flowers.
Later I added some black and dark umber to the spaces between the flowers to indicate meandering tree roots and maybe some fallen twigs.

I painted the bark of the tree with tones of browns, burnt umber, burnt sienna and yellow ocher.
Later I added deeper richer tones to intensify the tone gradation.
I added light yellow, Rose madder and light green to the highlights and deep red, crimson, orange and black to the dark tones.
I think it adds complexity to the bark.

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