This will be a very quick painting done wet into wet with big brush, with lots of paint for texture and sweeping motions full of gusto - rusticity and spontaneity of form and color.
Did you know that aspen grow in large clonal colonies ( a group of genetically identical plants - so in fact, aspens are clones of one another within the colony!) This is a true piece of information - trust me - as I researched it to the point of exhaustion!
To further validate my extensive research, individual trees can live for 40 - 150 years - BUT - I hope you are ready for this..........the root system of the colony in some cases can live for thousands of years! One colony in Utah titled PANDO is claimed to be 80,000 years old!! No lie - trust me!
Anyways here I go...........................
This is 16 x 8 on heavy linen canvas paper using a large brush with gobs & gobs of paint loaded onto it. Trees have texture - so texture is the word of the day - at least my day - which is a day off ------ did I mention that?
The first thing I do is indicate the presence of (happy little trees - Bob Ross talk) living in the forest. WOW look Ma no pencil marks - no lines to worry about going outside of!!!!
WOW!!! Look at that texture!!
Next I add some tree color to give the trees some structure and more identification as in "Hey -- we are trees - over here - look at us!!!!"
OK----- Time to generate some background color - I mentioned B4 that I always put my back ground in last as I really don't have a plan of composition or color and pretty much fly by the seat of the pants with most every painting I do.
It is kind of like people who say ....... play the piano by ear-------my father could play the piano by ear - never took a lesson in his life and I always wondered if he got a headache or an ear ache from doing that? :>)
Once again I'm going to spare you the Blah-Blah-Blah as I make up things as I go along and I really don't know what to tell you I'm going to do until I've already done it! Make sense? Of course it doesn't - it wasn't meant to!!
OKKKKKKKKAY - the next sequence is a pictorial representation of what I did to generate the background, some more definition of the trees, the light side and the dark side (that's a subject for another time) and the indication of other happy little trees back into the depth and darkness of the
bowels of the seemingly never ending forest in which evil could present itself in any form at any moment. Holy Crap now I'm afraid!!!
TA DAAAAAA
WE HAVE ASPEN TREES!!!
DETAIL OF THE TRUNKS AND FOREST FLOOR
I think I got some great texture on these trunks - what do you think?
