I have been working on a very large canvas to go on the living room wall in our home. Our living room opens to the front balcony which is up among the treetops of a beautiful leopard tree and lovely poinsettia tree. It is such a lovely retreat to sit on the deck and be surrounded by waiving leafy branches away from the rest of the world.
So when I was trying to decide on a suitable subject matter for this large painting, it took quite a while. Did I want to do a colourful abstract? I wasn’t sure and as I don’t paint in a traditional style, a landscape was out. One day whilst reading out on the deck, it finally dawned on me, paint my treetops!
I took some photos looking upwards into my treetops and then played around with them in Photoshop until I settled on a suitable composition.
First sketch the tree trunk and branches.
Then I had to paint in the tree canopy and all of the leaves. This took quite a while until I was happy with the composition.
It was quite a task to hang this large painting as it had to be hung in a very high position above our staircase. This involved ladders, tressels and the help of a builder; however it is finally up and looks great. What do you think?
