Today and for the past three days I've been painting the trees in a picture that I've been working on for over a year about a moment of realisation, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. The trees present a problem and I'm unhappy with the results. I think there are two problems, insufficient source images that match the lighting and atmosphere of the scene, and the complexity of woodlands, which confound my normal painting method. I tend to paint things as they are, never layering for effect. I paint transparency by mixing colours not overlaying, so lots of branches present a new problem. The most elegant solution is the paint a background first and paint the branches over the top, but at what point do solid trees become spindles of branches? Painting over the top sounds too easy for me!
Anyway, the first three days have produced some attractive results and rather ethereal. I quite like the look but I'm unhappy with the spontaneous way I achieved it and my instincts tell me to experiment and repaint the picture in several different ways to work out the best way to do it. I'll return to this picture after some thought.
