The Climbing Tree

Here is a simple painting of the catalpa tree in our back yard that has been my kids' and grandkids' climbing tree for 35 years. It is really huge--I can't get my arms around the trunk at all, and that first limb is 5 feet off the ground.

I include this because we never got to talk about painting the sky in your tree. I didn't miskit out anything, but wet the sky area only first and painted it in. I like the dark shadows that show the twisting and turning of the branches. Shadows tell you whether that branch is coming toward you or away from you. I used the palette knife techique on some of the smaller branches.