Birch trees - winter

 

Last week we were walking in the beautiful forest area near Rucphen and of course I made some reference pictures for painting and drawing. Trees are a favourite subject, dead or alive and this time I decided to make pictures of a group of birch trees standing with dead grasses and fallen leaves all around them - it's winter so that is no surprise.

In the background is a group of pine trees providing a nice dark contrasting area for the white birch trees. At the moment I made the picture there was a lot of blue in the sky with some gentle looking clouds and I liked that very well.

I did not mask the trees, painting around them may be a bit more work, but working in this way gives me the freedom to use my hair dryer to speed the drying process of my watercolour painting. Today the hair dryer was necessary as the days are short in winter and I prefer to paint in daylight. The painting was finished before it got too dark and I even had time to make the picture that I show in this blog post.

Birch trees are not often my subject of choice, maybe because they seem to be a 'classic' subject in tree paintings, but as I love to paint trees, I must not avoid these. I am happy with the result of my work.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of the painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.