Drawing challenge: Shinrin Yoku

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s drawing challenge: Shirin Yoku.

I was thinking that I actually do a lot of forest bathing, and the forest I love more than anything are birch and aspen forests.

I absolutely revel in the golden autumnal birches and aspens, but that’s just luck of the draw because I’m usually in that part of the world in the autumn.

But what about now? What about a fresh, green, spring birch forest?

The thought put me in the mood for a beautiful, big oil painting….in two days…yeah, I know!

So I got into the garage loft and took down a large canvas that I started painting something on a few years ago (No idea what I was thinking.)

Happily it had an acrylic layer, and soon I had it sanded off and painted a new layer of acrylic as a simple tone on it, and sketched a few “trees” in charcoal.

Then, with a couple pieces of birch bark as inspiration, I got out my oils.

If any of you paint with oils, you probably know that it takes days and days for oil layers to dry, and there is nothing practical which can be done to speed up the drying.

And while oils are my first and true art love, I’m not the most patient person in the world.

But the danger is that the oils will begin blending into mud with too much wet-on-wet work…

And so we must take a break for a day or two and prop up the painting on the mantle piece where we can walk by and admire it and try not to touch it to test for wetness. (sigh)

Hurry up and dry!

In the meantime, I can’t wait to come round and see how we’re all shirin yoku(ing).

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