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DAY FOUR: my first order of business was to get the grass under the trees smoothed out.

Once that was taken care of, I deepened the shadows and then painted the tree trunks.

DAY FIVE: Today my mission was to get the five pear trees in this painting completed. I'm going to take the tape off of them... my son Nathan will be thrilled by that since it has been bothering him for days! 🙂

I first laid down some bright greens and blues.

When that was done, I very carefully filled in the remaining areas with white.

After I had all the colors and the white where I wanted them, I very gently blended those together. The trick is to know when to stop, which is not always an easy decision. I often wish I could hit "UNDO." The other complicated issue with this painting is getting all the trees to match. After I finished the last one, I went back and worked on the other four to get them to look more similar. I decided I liked the smoothness of the tree on the right the best, so that's what I modeled the other four after.

Here it is from a distance. You can see that I lightened up the left edge of each tree, so that it looks like the sun is hitting that side. Now I'll just let it dry for a while, and then I'll go back and touch up any areas that still need work. Happy Arbor Day everyone!