garden pond in progress

Your personal process of painting may be something you have developed over the years, learned in a workshop or adopted from another artist's post online. Today I'm working on a 6x6 landscape of the pond in my flower garden. The steps of my work in oil on black gessoed hardboard are shown below.

 I print my reference photo in color and in grayscale. The X on the photo and on the blank panel helps me loosely layout the composition in medium-value green oil paint.

 The black of the panel is my darkest value. The initial composition in medium green is my middle value. Now I add the lightest values.

I continue to develop forms of the pond and trees by adding additional values of color. Click images to enlarge.