Rustic Winter Woods

Painting #45. I'd always wanted to paint this one but it always seemed to be "too complex for my level" (self-imposed!). On a whim today I pulled out some old brown, red, green, and yellow acrylic paints. I mixed up a few brownish hues on a plate and use a bunched up paper towel to pat in some of the dark background colors. I then used an old dollar store brush to paint in the distant trees with dark acrylic paint. That took me around 25 minutes. Painting this one with the oils was actually incredibly fun and very therapeutic. I covered the entire canvas with a thin coat of liquid clear, added a brown made from crimson and sap green over the whole painting except where the sky is. I added Indian yellow to the sky. I decided to try creating the illusion of sun rays filtering through the woods. It actually worked better than I thought so I'll be experimenting with that some more. This whole painting was really laid back and actually very simple. I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't have much experience painting. Once I started adding the oils, it couldn't have taken me much more than 1.5 hours to complete. I'd love to see a painting like this on a very large, rectangular canvas. I really like the colors. 18x24.