Freestylin’ Birch

I guess the tree pic from the last post was lingering in my mind... I felt an urgent need to paint this tree last night. It has its faults but its got a few good things going on. Beyond all that, however, it was fun to make. I needed a break from my current paintings... every brushstroke has become painfully precious which seems to be killing my enthusiasm to finish them. This little fellah, however, was a joy to make: fat brush, big dollops of paint, no mediums and no reference photo. (Well, I used the tree pic below to start the rough sketch but most of that went away as soon as the paint started flying.)