With 141 I finally turned a corner on these trees. I took what I learned about separating the foreground from the background in 140 and flipped it. So now we have this bright light in the background and the tree canopy is keeping the foreground in total shadow.

Another huge thing on this one was that I lowered the water line. The real version had it hitting right where the dark branch cut across and it was confusing. So after fighting with it for a while I decided there was nothing wrong with totally changing it.

The process on this one was interesting as well. I painted the whole thing in Burnt Umber so it was totally painted in monotone. Then I came back overtop of that (after it dried) and barely added paint to the undercoat. Just touches here and there but not thick paint or large pieces of color. Lots of little strokes.

I’m finally happy with one but we are just getting started.