I’m not a landscape painter. Even so, since I like my backgrounds to look interesting, I do, from time-to-time, have to paint landscapes. In order to do that well, that means actually painting them to exercise one’s painterly muscles.

I found this reference image that required a lot of work doing trees. It also incorporated a small figure, which I like to add to landscape or architectural pieces if they aren’t already there, just so there is some enigmatic story that goes along with the picture. Being a storyteller, it’s little elements like that which make a work such as this eternally interesting to me. Why is he on the road? Where is he going / where is he coming from? Why is he on a bicycle? Is this someplace familiar? Is he pressed for time? And so forth and so on.