Dawntree

This is really a preparatory study for an upcoming painting called "Dawn of the Hamadryad" as I needed to see how I could go about painting the tree branches etc. I might do one more preparatory painting as I need to see how I'm going to incorporate the figure into the tree.
There was no under drawing as such on this and went straight to painting in the trunk etc in a spontaneous and hopefully organic way trying to mimic Nature. I then added some washes of transparent colour before working into the shapes created in the first stage. Once the colour started to go in the painting started to look very "Fantasy" which is fine but I want the final painting "Dawn of the Hamadryad" to look more like a Victorian-era picture such as Waterhouse etc - OK I accept that it will never be as good as those guys but I'm going to have a go!
This study has actually proved pretty popular in Instagram as I have posted the progress so that's encouraging. I might show this at IX in October, we'll see.
12" x 16" oil on linen.
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog as well as on Instagram, I can be found on Instagram as "paintingsbymarkharrison".