Bark The First

A highly textured painting of a tree trunk, developed using texture paste mixed with ground cumin, so you can enjoy the smell as well as the look! The background is also texturised with a mix of payne’s grey and titanium buff heavily applied with a knife. The image is a representation, in a slightly abstract way, of a tree trunk. This image came to me after I’d done a preliminary sketch of a tree trunk with some charcoal recently, so I decided to work up from that into the painting. Using a mixture of raw umber, burnt sienna and yellow ochre I applied the paint by mixing it in stages with the texture paste. I built up the layers with a palette knife, then added shading with a fan brush.

Completion date:April 9th 2005