This painting was made in many layers. First I painted the sky and afterwards painted the outline of the tree in red and when that had dried I added copper leaf.

This is one of the paintings I demonstrated to the Royston Art Group. They saw it at its very early stage when I didn't really know how it would progress. At the demonstration I added the tiny branches in copper paint and painted quite a few leaves which took up quite a bit of time. Because I think it is a little boring watching paint dry I did lots of different painting there.

After the demonstration and back home in my studio I made many leaf layers but decided it needed a focus and got out some books on English birds and added them. Afterwards I added the white and pink flowers and the small berries before the final layer with the fruit.

I painted the millefleur as I was waiting for the layers to dry.