Mount Orford Park, Quebec

Here is a small landscape I did on location at Mount Orford Park, just one hour east of Montreal. It was done early in the morning, the low clouds were floating atop the mountain in the background. The scene was tough to find, when you are surrounded by trees the sight lines are blocked, so basically, you end up painting the trees. There is a nice relaxed quality to this painting, you get that camping vibe. It is hard to see, but there is a tiny orange construction cone near the lane way. Construction cones and garbage cans are signature features of many Darlington landscapes!

Painting trees is always difficult. The temptation for the amateur painter is to try and paint every leaf but this quickly becomes a hopeless task, especially in the forest. The better strategy is to try and 'represent' the leaves. In this painting, I represented the leaves by first doing a wet-in-wet wash. To do this, lightly moisten the paper with some clean water, then paint the shape of the trees using a medium green-orange or green-blue mix. When that starts to dry, add some darker versions of the base colour by adding some red and blue. Let this dry... it will look like an out of focus green blob at this stage. Then, drag some dark green paint over top of the 'blob' to give texture. Use the brush sideways and gently drag across in random directions. The texture gives the illusion of leaves, and the underlay gives the volume of the tree. This will take some practice to get the wetness correct on each layer, and judge the colours and values properly.

11x7.5" cold press July 2013.