</MYMAILSTATIONERY> "Aspen Grove Study_01" Triptych oil painting of Aspen trees in Fall. Beginning This painting is inspired by my many hikes amongst local Aspen groves in various seasons in northern Arizona, and the idea lends itself to my "discovery" approach, painting into a dark value background without a definitive drawing. This allows for spontaneous discovery and great joy while painting. First day, still at work in the lobby of the Old Town Gallery in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona.You can see my three "blank" panels. No drawing. I have chosen a neutral solid background, this eliminates the problem of a solid white background which must be completely painted over before values can be realistically judged. We begin! The exciting "raw nerves" part of the painting, blocking in the first primitive shapes. This is why I call this "discovery." It requires nerve, and discretion. It is easy to over do. It is tempting to try and make these lines look like trees too soon. I mixed some gray color using white, raw umber and a little black. The small picture, upper left, shows my very first stroke, a sightly off-center thin line which will become a tree later on. Right now all it is is a design element, breaking up the flat surface. I deliberately made sure that each panel had one tree that touched the top and the bottom. This makes sure that each panel has some element with a foreground. 06/12/03... 
My first step in this session was to paint a basic dark strip through the background of the picture. This band of color represent what will eventually become the distant void of the forest. Some hint of distant trees, stumps and more may be apparent and I develop it later. It is undefined right now but necessary so I have something to paint over later. For this I used olive green right out of the tube 
From there, using some of the left over paint - the olive green, I added some yellow ochre and a little Naples yellow to create this next darker tone, which I painted in as the forest ground. This color is not critical, only necessarily somewhat dark as it will serve only to be visible beneath the future grass and texture. Ninety per cent of our goal right now is to paint out the background color. It falsely affects what we now see Aspen Grove Study_01" In today's painting session I really began what might be called the "middle painting," as compared to what is the "underpainting." The early stages of detail began to appear in the aspen leaves, the distant forest void and in the grass of the forest floor. There are great "patterns" within each of these areas and, working from dark to light I've begun to develop these. It requires patience as one paints into the unknown. While painting what are leaves in the background, some green and some just dark, I keep in mind the larger perspective of the mass as a whole. I now also dawbed in slightly lighter color into the forest void for, although filled with shadow and far away it still has some light happening. I've indicated a couple small Ponderous pine trees as well. I want all of this to remain very subtle, and I have a idea for this area which I'll try later. The grass patterns are painted in in tones much darker than final. Paint colors used in today's work included: Raw Umber, Permanent Sap Green, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow and White. 06/21/03... It's beginning to look a lot like Autumn! This really reveals how the only purpose of the underpainting is to cover the background with a compatible color. The underpainting is nearly always a bit duller than the eventual color. And, I stated before, normally I work dark to light, but the yellow spectrum in pigment is transparent, so I underpaint in a color that is lighter, duller and opaque. In this case I used a lot of Naples Yellow, an earth color. All earth colors are opaque and tint cleanly. I'm still not working hard at making this look like trees yet, just shapes. Painting large volumes of aspen leaves is like painting large billowing clouds made out of colored dots. Today's colors: Raw Umber, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Orange Light, Yellow Ochre and Naples Yellow.  In today's painting session I really began what might be called the "middle painting," as compared to what is the "underpainting." The early stages of detail began to appear in the aspen leaves, the distant forest void and in the grass of the forest floor. There are great "patterns" within each of these areas and, working from dark to light I've begun to develop these. It requires patience as one paints into the unknown. While painting what are leaves in the background, some green and some just dark, I keep in mind the larger perspective of the mass as a whole. I now also dawbed in slightly lighter color into the forest void for, although filled with shadow and far away it still has some light happening. I've indicated a couple small Ponderous pine trees as well. I want all of this to remain very subtle, and I have a idea for this area which I'll try later. The grass patterns are painted in in tones much darker than final. Paint colors used in today's work included: Raw Umber, Permanent Sap Green, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow and White. 06/21/03... It's beginning to look a lot like Autumn! This really reveals how the only purpose of the underpainting is to cover the background with a compatible color. The underpainting is nearly always a bit duller than the eventual color. And, I stated before, normally I work dark to light, but the yellow spectrum in pigment is transparent, so I underpaint in a color that is lighter, duller and opaque. In this case I used a lot of Naples Yellow, an earth color. All earth colors are opaque and tint cleanly. I'm still not working hard at making this look like trees yet, just shapes. Painting large volumes of aspen leaves is like painting large billowing clouds made out of colored dots. Today's colors: Raw Umber, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Orange Light, Yellow Ochre and Naples Yellow. 06/27/03... In today's painting session I really began what might be called the "middle painting," as compared to what is the "underpainting." The early stages of detail began to appear in the aspen leaves, the distant forest void and in the grass of the forest floor. There are great "patterns" within each of these areas and, working from dark to light I've begun to develop these. It requires patience as one paints into the unknown. While painting what are leaves in the background, some green and some just dark, I keep in mind the larger perspective of the mass as a whole. I now also dawbed in slightly lighter color into the forest void for, although filled with shadow and far away it still has some light happening. I've indicated a couple small Ponderous pine trees as well. I want all of this to remain very subtle, and I have a idea for this area which I'll try later. The grass patterns are painted in in tones much darker than final. Paint colors used in today's work included: Raw Umber, Permanent Sap Green, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow and White. It's beginning to look a lot like Autumn! This really reveals how the only purpose of the underpainting is to cover the background with a compatible color. The underpainting is nearly always a bit duller than the eventual color. And, I stated before, normally I work dark to light, but the yellow spectrum in pigment is transparent, so I underpaint in a color that is lighter, duller and opaque. In this case I used a lot of Naples Yellow, an earth color. All earth colors are opaque and tint cleanly. I'm still not working hard at making this look like trees yet, just shapes. Painting large volumes of aspen leaves is like painting large billowing clouds made out of colored dots. Today's colors: Raw Umber, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Orange Light, Yellow Ochre and Naples Yellow.  | You can see that in today's work session I've begun developing patterns of color and texture in the grass forest floor, always working from dark to light. I've also completely repainted each tree trunk, to re-establish the outlines and to build up the paint layer. I like a substantial layer of paint on my foreground subjects. Today's colors are: Raw Umber, Permanent Sap Green, Cadmium Orange and Naples Yellow. | 07/01/03... This latest painting session took a couple days, about ten hours of work. Lots of work on the ground texture and tone. (See the note below) Tree limbs have been added and the shadow tone also painted onto the left side of all of the trees. Today's colors are: Raw Umber, Permanent Sap Green, Cadmium Orange and Naples Yellow, in a darker and greener mix. Below is an extreme close up of the painting. 
 | Lecture notes: Here's an important tip about values and perspective when painting. Always keep in mind the big shapes that hold it together. The simple geometric construction to the left shows the basic shapes beneath this painting. When you know this you know why the ground gets darker beneath your feet and appears closer because of this. Managing this perspective is the "lesson" of this picture. | 07/06/03... For the first time I am making an effort to make the trees look like trees. Up until now they were simply design elements in the composition. I am beginning the process now of adding the lighter values to the tree trunks, along with aspen texture for identification. 07/09/03... 
In this most recent painting session I've done two things: I've painted yet another lighter value on the trees, but not all of them. I'm beginning to establish the final value of the trees furthest away deep in the shadows of the grove. Distance and shade make them less bright and less detailed. The trees in the foreground, right in front of me are the lightest and the most detailed. They are about 60% of the way toward the lightest they will eventually become. And, secondly, a major adjustment: After studying the painting a while in the past few days I realized a mistake. Allowing the sky to be visible is inappropriate. It makes the trees look too short AND I am depicting this aspen grove in front of or at the edgeof a major mass of conifer trees so big and so dark as to create a dark void in the center of the picture. It is darkness that should be visible in the "holes" between the aspen leaves, where they appear. The tree bark paint was mixed today with Black, Permanent Sap Green and Zinc White.
07/21/03... I had to set this aside for a few days, needed to write my most recent tutorial... 
Back to this painting... In this session I painted yet another lighter layer on the aspen tree trunks, bringing the foreground trees more into the light. I also started painting the aspen leaves that will appear closer and have bright sunlight hitting them. They will be brighter and, by contrast, verify the density of shadows in the depth of the painting. The mass of tree growth in this grove is so thick that is blocks out most of the light, which is the effect I'm striving for. Below is a detailed close up of panel "c." Lots of rich color. 
07/31/03...  | You can tell by this latest photo that this painting session dealt with the texture of the forest floor and building the new mass of leaves in the sunlight and foreground. Things are coming along. For fun, and the delight of whomever ends up owning this painting, I've added several quite obscure deer in the forest depths. | 08/03/03... | This latest painting session, over four hours long, was done with the complete preoccupation of painting the middle values in the grass and fallen leaves on the ground. This requires great patience slowly adding color from dark to light. But it will mean everything as the final touches are done. | 08/29/03... the "ALMOST" finished painting...  The latest painting session took two days, lots of small details that make the difference. I added three more values of color to the grass, and totally reworked the foreground leaves. I now have more random light in the distant forest void and the four mule deer in the painting are easier to see now. There is still some work to do on the forest floor, distance and the foreground branches. Little things that make a difference. Here's some close up pictures of the painting in its current state, the upper left corner and the lower right corner. This helps you see more of the texture and the detail, and more accurate color, depending upon your monitor of course.  09/12/03... Finished The final steps were all about sunlight, adding it in discrete locations in small amounts that make a difference. Bits of bright yellow were added into the mass of aspen leaves to indicate that light is penetrating the canopy in several places. Then I added brighter light to places in the far distant forest that started out as a dark void.
The more spots of light I added the better I liked this painting. Finally I added a lot of sunlit grass coming in from the lower right into the scene across the forest floor. It supports the overall amount sunlight and its direction.
I seldom post an image this large, but doing a close up gives me a chance to show you the actual colors not so easily depicted in the smaller digital snapshots I take. This also shows how I've added bright sunlight on the furthest away forest, behind the four deer that I've hidden in the background. Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed the trip and the many steps in creating this oil painting. Within a few weeks, when I've started my next painting (an interpretation of the Walnut
Canyon National Monument ancient culture), it will be in this space and I'll add this
painting lesson to my online tutorials. Footnote: 
This painting, "Aspen Grove Study One," was my last picture to start in the lobby of the Old Town Gallery here in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona. The gallery closed on July 28, 2003. I was privileged to do oil paintings in the gallery for two and a half years. This photo, taken by a visitor and mailed to me, shows the last day of my doing the "Fall on McMillan Mesa" painting. FYI
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