Wildflowers & Palms

When I first moved back to Florida thirty years ago I didn't paint palm trees. I had hardly ever seen a palm tree before. So it took a while for me to get enough courage to paint the palm trees. Now I seem to paint one in every landscape painting. This painting was done as a demonstration in my workshop last month. I was showing how to paint palms, wildflowers and a simple sky with clouds. I kept the composition simple, knowing that if a put in very many palm trees it would take too long to complete the painting. We did a lot of masking on this painting. I masked out the lighter valued palm fronds and the wildflowers in the field. Then I went back in and painted them in light colors after the dark wash had dried and I removed the mask. The sky takes up a very large space in this painting and I was able to paint the sky in about five minutes. This allowed me to spend the rest of the time working on the palms and wildflowers in the field. These wildflowers grow along the St. John's river and only flower for one to two weeks in October.