Warm Trees against Cool Blue Sky

Challenge # 25 for the Rookie Painter is a photo of a few tree trunks reaching up against a blue sky. The photo showed a beautiful blue sky that gradated from a very light (almost white) to a very dark blue. In the foreground are 3 tree trunks, which in the photo are grayish in color, stretching up against the blue sky.

I always loved images of trees that show the vertical height of them, and against such a blue background it is irresistible. But I needed to make a few changes to it. First, the blue sky - I could have done it with more realism - carefully blending each color and value change from bottom to top. Instead, I broke it down into 5 blue values and painted them as the diagonal shapes you see. I thought it would add a bit more interest to the painting, and a bit more energy too. The second change I made was to go with a warm color palette on the tree trunks. I thought the warm against the cool blue would make an interesting contrast.

A fun painting to do!