Tree on the Common

(C) 2019 Dale DiMauro

Painting trees is exciting, rewarding and at times, frustrating. Lately, I have become obsessed with these specimen trees I see exposed to the wintry elements. They have such character with their graceful limbs, speckled trunks and strong shadows. Recently, I have seen numerous birds congregate up in their crowns while chewing on seeds. On windy days I am concerned they will blow down on neighboring power lines.

It is good practice I believe, to force yourself, to paint a watercolor in a limited window. I finished this painting an hour ago and started it the prior hour. From my experience, these time constraints parallel some of the characteristics of plein air painting. I was forced to keep the composition simple along with the chosen palette and forced to paint directly.

Finally, it was frustrating cropping the photograph with the blogger software for some reason. I failed to crop the first photograph but uploaded a second and it seemed to be misplaced in the folder.