Elies Dendro - stage 1

The title is Greek for an olive tree - it's a painting of a very old olive tree on the Greek island of Zakynthos. This is the first in a series of small landscape paintings in which I try things out. This one will be a pretty much monochromatic one in which I push around the paint thinned with Liquin with some different, fairly knackered brushes, no initial drawing just straight to paint at the first stage. I am using a mix of Burnt Sienna and Indanthrene Blue, one semi opaque the other transparent. I am probably going to keep the tree trunk in sharp focus and the background will be soft and atmospheric... or I may change my mind as I go along. 
Oil on linen 16" x 12".