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During the lockdown I was not able to go to my usual plein air locations, so I just set up my easel in the grounds of the apartment building.

There is a driveway with a wood on one side, and I started a series of paintings on the edge of the wood. I continued these from mid April until mid May, and painted 14 paintings altogether.

In the beginning the leaves were only just starting to open, and the sunlight penetrated through the trees freely. Every week the leaves opened more, and nettles and undergrowth grew higher, so by mid May everything was very lush and green.

The advantage of painting in a series is that as one becomes more familiar with the subject one can then focus more on painting and less on working things out.

This one is the first in the series from the edge of the driveway with afternoon light.

This one is another afternoon light painting.

These are all morning paintings looking down the path into the wood.

This first one has less leaves open.

I worked on different size boards throughout the series. Some paintings are small and fast, while some are medium size.

This one is the last in the series, and is a larger painting measuring 50 x 40cm. I found in the end that I preferred the vertical format because there was space for both shadows and light on the path and also enough space to show more of the trees growing into the canopy of leaves.

I plan to do a large studio painting in this vertical format.