Painting the National Parks Tour

I've been back a week from vacation and have been busy translating the sights, sounds and emotions into visual images. Two of the efforts have promise and I will post them later after a peer review on Thursday.

I participate in a critique/workshop with John Massimino on Thursday morning. John has a good eye, makes positive suggestions and has a direct way of telling you what works or doesn't in your painting; why it works or doesn't and does so without being condescending, arrogant or dismissive.

While the National Parks material is fresh and exciting, I've got one pre-National Parks image I'm working on that has given me trouble in the past. It's a scene of three trees standing on a bluff. I'm having difficulty capturing the leaf mass in the trees while still distinguishing the differences in the branches and leaves. It's a balancing act of creating unique shapes while abstracting the lights and shades of the leaf mass. I think I've painted it at least half a dozen times without success but I'm not ready to give up on it. Consequently I'm not certain what I'll paint next. The solution might be simulataneous paintings.