Walton Woods

Walton Woods
5” x 7”
Acrylic on archival Gessobord (1/8” flat)
Chris Breier © 2015

The original painting is available.
Walton Woods is located next to my local library, I often take a walk there when I drop off my books. I took the reference photograph for this painting on an unusually warm a day in late Fall.

I began by painting the sky with a wash of dark blue. Once I had the trees well defined, I blocked in the “sky holes” with a lighter blue mixed from Phthalocyanine Blue and Titanium White. In case you’re wondering, “sky holes” are the open spaces of sky between the branches of a tree.

I had fun building up the textures of the trees and applying layers of color. The challenge of painting nature scenes is creating an impression of the complex textures and shapes without falling into the trap of painting every single detail. However, the drawing is less demanding because nobody can tell if I didn’t get the position of every limb exactly right, whereas anybody can detect the slightest inaccuracy in a portrait.