Tree Study (Oil 12 x 9)

The sky was overcast the whole day in spite of my wishful thinking that it would clear up in the afternoon. By 2:30 PM, I believed the sun would not show up today, so I got my stuff and pulled the kit to the Forest Park. I walked deep into the woods in an attempt to find an interesting tree I saw yesterday. Instead, I came to this old tree which came up like a giant fork but somehow one trunk snapped and fell down dead to the ground. The other half was still growing. Therefore, I decided to paint it.

Since the time change, it gets dark really early in New York, so I had to rush. The whole piece took only a little more than an hour. When it was getting dark, I didn't have time to clean away paint from the pochade box and was in a hurry to pack everything into my backpack and close the tripod. I was a little concerned since there was no one else in the woods and I was kind of lost. Fortunately, I simply walked in the direction of where the traffic noise came from. I got home before it was totally dark.

Maybe I wanted to make a point to pull the tree away from its background, I realized when it was finished that I shouldn't have made the tone change so sharply. At least I have learned something about the tonal nuances.