I had previously sketched this on day 2 of my field sketches, again I had photographed the scene for reference, this came to be very useful when adding color. I wanted to try to make this image quite vibrant, I decided that some brush tipped pens would add some string instant color and my set had some really nice exaggerated autumnal hues.
I dulled the drawing with the putty rubber and looked among my brush pens for suitable colors. I didn’t want to use any black ink, I found a dark purple that was almost brown, this would be my darkest tone, each tree had a distinct color so I tried to work in blocks of hue and applied the appropriate tones in each colors range. Each tree had a different color or texture, or even for some decoration such as fungus or leaves.
I really enjoyed this exercise, adding color really brought the scene to life. The brush pens were capable of delivering all sorts of marks from thin lines to by bold strokes, the nice thing about pressing hard was the strokes become broken where the ink ran dry towards the end. I’m pleased I resisted adding line work to the image,especially where the distant trees start to look faded and pale, almost misty.
