Painting in Progress - Antique John Deere Tractor part 2

The more I work on this painting, the more excited I get. It's starting to look like a painting! This weekend I worked on the tree branches, getting a believable snow cover on them and painting the branches beneath.

Another thing that excites me is the size of this painting. A full sheet is really huge (if you're like me and previously only painted smaller than 11" x 14"). I've done a few full sheet paintings but always more loose and impressionistic. I'm really enjoying the size though, and it just seems like a 'serious' painting because of the size. Though I'm having a hard time finding the right brush for some of the strokes I want to make. I'd like to use a larger brush for the spruce needles rather than my #4 rigger, but my large round brushes just don't hold the right kind of crisp point, and my needles come out too soft and fat. So I use the #4 and get wrist strain flicking them in one by one. Well, I don't actually get wrist strain - I just get impatient!

In other news...I've started a "mommy blog" - basically just a place for me to talk about everything that doesn't really fit on an art blog. I've named it Hanging Out the Wash, and I'm hoping to blog there almost daily.