It’s a bit of an abstract painting today. I thought I would try something “simple” and just focus in on the shadows on the deck. It ended up being not at all simple, and as I was painting I realized that there were at least four different layers of shadows of varying intensity–the close-up shadows of the chairs and deck railings, the shadows of the cotoneaster shrub by the deck (the darker leaf shadows), the bit further away shadows of the neighbor’s crabapple tree (the blurrier leaf shadows in the foreground), and the furthest away shadows of the neighbor’s swedish aspen trees (the two fainter tall shadows cutting across the deck). It is interesting though, how at first it just looked like one big jumble to me until I started analysing where each shadow was coming from. It was a fun painting to do.