Opie in progress 7

In the original photo Opie was wearing Ember's turquoise collar. That color looked so nice with Opie's red coat, that was what inspired me to put the turquoise forest behind him. 

Below: Here you can really see that I am working in colored pencil - turquoise and green over the golden-brown ground. I am purposely leaving the ground color showing throughout much of the painting. This is as much as I am going to show of the trees at left - just enough of a suggestion that your eye fills in the rest.

Trees in Prismacolor pencil over the underpainting and ground. In this closeup you can see how masking off the tree branches at the beginning left the ground showing through and how the smooth wash of pale blue for the mountain background went around them.