A woodland study from scratch

I usually start with a very simple sketch just so that I can get a mental picture of where I'm headed. With this one I was wanting to draw the on looker in both with composition and colour. So the intention was to have dark cool greens in the foreground and shadows leading the eye up to the little clump of trees. In order to capture the vibrancy of spring time greens I wanted a grey background with quite a lot of purple in it.

First step was to put in the sky with the sun behind the clump of trees.

Now for the greys, there is a river off to the left so I've lightened the grey down there.

I've started stealing the grey paint from the background to take the tree branches up into the sky and warmed up the branches in the sunlit portion.

Now for more shadow and I've started defining the distant trees as well as putting the river in. I've also very carefully added some very grey greens. 

With the background complete it's time to get bold and put the foreground shadows in. Colour wise I'm using Winsor green, burnt sienna and purple, this will hopefully blend well with the greens to come.

It's going GREEN, make or break time. To keep the green realistic I'm putting in large anounts of burnt sienna and purple for the dark stuff. For the light I'm mixing lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, emerald green, cadmium green and lots of white.

Trees....time for lunch so I can stand back and come in clean for the final push.

Will post later to hopefully show off.