Work In Progress, Withlacoochee Flight, Update 5

Work In Progress: Withlacoochee Flight Update 5
This past week I worked on the large mass of tree on the right side. I wanted to get them in because I was getting too fixated on the distant trees and wasn’t sure if more detail was necessary. Composition principles told me those distant trees should be ambiguous and indistinct but, without anything else on the paper, they took center stage. I had to remember they would be backdrop to more important and closer objects. So, I left them with suggestive detail and decided to work on objects closer up. I knew that once closer and more important objects were rendered, the distant trees would recede from importance – and that seemed to happen as I put in more and more of the closer and larger mass of trees on the right. Even at this point, having put in about half of the trees, attention is drawn away from the distant trees and they become more of a backdrop.
The first step to painting in that large grouping of trees was to very roughly, and very lightly, block in the important light and dark masses within the larger mass of trees. I used the color sketch as a basis. The darker areas were roughly filled in with chrome oxide green (FC). Once the darker value areas were mapped out I colored in the lighter masses with chartreuse.
Next, I started working small sections, slowly refining the shapes of each by adding more and more detail, filling in more color, strengthening the values. To make the darkest shadows I mixed tuscan red (P) and chrome oxide green (FC). For the lighter values I added chromium green opaque (FC) and naples yellow (FC) to the chartreuse.
I’ll continue in this manner, working from rough to detailed, completing sections at a time, until the entire mass of trees on the right is finished.