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Orchard in Early Spring 30”x40” Oil

Since most of this landscape is in middle value with darks mostly limited to the trunks of the trees and with a somewhat larger piece of white sky, then I needed to have a strong variation in colors in the large middle value somewhat similar to what the impressionists did, using cool and warm colors of similar values for interest and visual effect. The French impressionists, I believe, depended on color effect more so than tonal effect that is why some works of the impressionists look bland when shown in gray scale but sparkle in color. They even used broken color in their darks, so their darks were not really blackish darks.

This was somewhat a difficult subject since it really didn’t have striking large shapes so, much of the work after blocking, was done slowly and deliberately in the studio with broken color in small dabs and streaks of varied shades of hues of close values.