My starting point was to sketch the painting's composition in pencil onto the canvas, marking the horizon line and where the main tree trunks would be. Then I blocked in a background color with acrylic paints -- cerulean blue for the sky and Australian yellow green.
The latter was a new color I wanted to try, from Derivan Matisse, an Australian paint company. Looking at it though, it was a quite a bit greener than what I envisaged for the painting, so I then painted over it with a thin glaze of cadmium yellow, then a more opaque glaze of cadmium orange (except for the areas of the main tree trunks).
