In this phase of the painting, I’m covering most of the red canvas in the background trees.

Continuing my work on this large painting, I have used wide brush strokes and bold colors in the foreground and left quite a bit of the red canvas.  As I work back toward the trees in the distance, I’m doing more mixing to lessen the intensity of colors and covering most of the red.

Although I exaggerate colors, I want to keep the light and dark pattern of the small study.   I use my camera on the black and white setting to check the values.  Notice that the red of the canvas is a middle value.  Once I establish the lights and darks at the beginning, I can cover the red with middle values of blue and green without changing the value structure.

Making a black and white photograph helps to see the value structure.

I have found that painting larger pieces in oils has made me work more slowly and deliberately. Of course, more paint is required and mixing takes longer.  I have to think more about the size and direction of the brush strokes even in areas that may have been solid shapes on a smaller scale.  The challenge is to keep the freshness of the small study while making any needed improvements.