See what goes on inside the artist's studio!

This is the begining of a painting. The tree is just penciled in to give me a reference point but I am mostly working on the background here. It's hard to  tell in this picture but  this is a few layers in and I am building up the texture already. The center is masked off with painters tape to leave a nice crisp line between the border and the rest of the background.

Adding more texture and filling in the background. I love the warm tones you can get working with gold and red!

Background is done now. The edges just needed some touching up and I added another layer of glaze to the border.

Opps! I got carried away painting and forgot to take some pictures in between! The tree is almost finished, just need to adjust the proportions a bit and add some more texture!