Into The Sun

This painting truly gives a feeling of the enormity of the giant sequoia trees. Looking at it, I can feel my neck craning and my jaw dropping in wonder as this giant tree simply towers above me!

This is my latest in the series I’m working on, with the help of photos I took recently while hiking in the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park.

The part of this painting that is much better seen in person is the thick texture of the paint. I painted most of it with a palette knife, and only switched to using paintbrushes in the final layer of paint.

Here are a couple close-ups that really show the roughness of the texture created by the paint being spread onto the canvas freely–in places, rather than carefully mixing the paint, I simply slapped one color right next to another and smeared them together loosely.

Because of this loose technique, and the varying thickness of the paint, the effect is quite different when looking up close as opposed to backing up and seeing the big picture.

For scale, here is the painting over a king-size bed.