Woodland 5 by Roz Edwards

Where did the inspiration come from for this piece?

“Woodlands 5” is a slightly different style to many of my other works. It has a limited palette and is fairly graphic and stylised. I have used mixed media, paint and ink, to give a sketchy feel to the painting. I wanted to show texture and the feel of the wind blowing in the trees. The inspiration came from a photograph I took. Most of my paintings are inspired by my photographs. I take photos of trees wherever I go. This one was based on a forest near Split in Croatia.

What is the creative process when creating your tree paintings? 

I rarely copy the photo exactly in terms of content or colours. I use them as starting points. Sometimes I combine elements from several photos in Photoshop to get the sort of composition I have in mind.  But when I start to paint everything changes anyway. I constantly change the painting as I work on it, and never quite know at the start how it will end up. This is the beauty of acrylic paint. You can just keep layering up colours and brush marks until the painting feels right. I usually start my paintings dark, and add lighter colours and white, as I come to the final stages. This is why I could never work in watercolour as the process of layering and adding white at the end is exactly the opposite of how I work!

How long would this work have taken you? 

I often work on several paintings at once, so it is difficult to say how long each one actually takes. This is a smallish painting, to fit a 16 x 20 inch frame. If I had worked on it continuously, including planning and preparation, it would probably have taken me about 3 days. However, it most likely took several weeks as I had other paintings being developed at the same time. It is good to take a break from your work because when you come back to it, you see it with fresh eyes, and maybe have a new idea as to the way it will progress.
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