The Color of Light: An Artist's Blog

Green is notorious among artists for being difficult to paint. It can so easily take on a garish quality and turn a landscape we'd hoped to look gentle and nuanced into a cartoon.

However, green is one of my favorite colors and I always gravitate toward painting it. Perhaps it's because I I'm fortunate to live in the midst of so much green - I'm surrounded by trees. I captured this photo a few days ago walking up the gravel road to my house when the light was hitting that gorgeous oak tree just right.

Using neutral colors, varying temperatures, and just a few bright areas of chromatic color can really make a green dominant painting sing. I chose to paint this on a dark background to really help those bright greens pop.