Step #9, An Artist's Process for a Large Painting

 All right.  I left off with having only the cartoon drawn on.  Now I'm loosely laying down some color.  I've decided to use only one 2" brush for the entire painting for two reasons:

I really love paintings that show broad, fast brushstrokes with a lot of the mixing done on the surface..  If I yielded to the temptation of using a smaller brush anywhere, it would add a lot of time to the painting.

NOTE:  THIS IS THE FIRST OF THREE PAINT LAYERS.  DON'T BE HARD ON ME - I KNOW THERE ARE PROBLEMS WITH THIS.  I'm going to lay colors right over those problems and we won't even worry about them at this stage.

I'm going to do some hills in the background, but most of the foreground is going to be covered with "Woodlands trees," as they asked.

Starting to lay in more color here.  By the way, my palette is just a styrofoam rectangle, left over from some project, I know not what.

I know the clouds look like bubbles or something.  I'll lay in refinements tomorrow, but most of it will be covered by trees, so it won't matter.  Also went too heavy with the reds and oranges on the left side; just couldn't resist the lush complimentary colors.
 

Mixing colors.

For the foreground I slathered on red, magenta and a nice tangerine orange.  It took me literally five minutes or less.  Most of these will be covered tomorrow, but I want to have them peeking through the underbrush and trees tomorrow.

Here's a closeup of a little part of the lower portion of the painting.  The colors are so lush, it's going to be hard to paint over them tomorrow!

You know it's a good day when you don't have time to cook supper and your daughter does.  Crawfish!!!  Yum!!!  Thank you, Melody!  After all that painting, this was welcome!