After settling on the basics of my composition, I went about making a tonal study, followed by several colour studies. The tonal study used information from my photos, as well as atmospheric perspective. Atmospheric perspective is where things get lighter the further back they are – the reason for which is that the atmosphere provides little pieces of goo (water, mist, cloud, air, whatever) that reflects the sun, and so the further back you go, the more of this you see.

I like to call this my SFD (shitty first draft) 🙂 Immediately I can see there’s an issue with the background – it is bare as anything. I’ll have a think on how to resolve this.

After being relatively happy with my SFD, I moved on to a colour study. For my first colour study, I browsed the interwebs for a painting that I’d like to base the colour scheme on.

I stumbled on this gem by Tom Roberts. My attempt to mimic the colour scheme was a bit of a fail, but I quite liked the outcome regardless.

My second attempt is currently in progress. It’s more of a “spring” if I called the last attempt is an autumn.