Bram Bevins' "Vibrant Sunset"

12"x16" canvas. Liquid Clear, Titanium White, Indian Yellow, Cad' Yellow, Bright Red, Alizarin Crimson, Phthalo Blue, Midnight Black and Liquid Black.

I hadn't painted in three months and had to overcome my very strong tendency to procrastinate in order to get back into it. I'd been meaning to try Bram Bevins' "Vibrant Sunset" for a while.

I like the wat that the sky turned out, but I did have some problems. Right from the start I had trouble blending away brushstrokes with my 2" brush. I had to resort to a very soft goat-hair blender brush and even it was leaving the occasional white streak where it had lifted off the paint. I suspect that the problem was too much liquid clear. Later, at one point, the paint started reacting to some thinner that must have been left on a brush that I thought I had dried properly. Hundreds of little white circles started appearing in a band across the painting between the red and blue sections. I blended it all together and went over it with a new layer of purple, but I don't know what it means for the long term. Will it still dry properly?

In Bram's original tutorial the trees are bare and done with the script liner. I've never had any luck with script liners so I decided to try painting them with some small synthetic dagger brushes I bought before Christmas. I found them to be easier to use, but still wasn't a fan of how the trees turned out, so I covered the big one with foliage. I took Bram's suggestion of using Liquid Black instead of thinned Midnight Black for the trees.