Artist Commentary: Yellow!!!! It is such a happy color and it is so much fun to paint with yellow. Many people think if you paint with a 'light yellow,' one with a lot of white in the base color, you will get a great pop of yellow but that couldn't be further from the truth. I have found that to get yellow to sing you need to layer different values of light and dark while paying particular attention to warm and cool color temperature. This is how you make yellow have that zing of sunlight. I took this photo reference while we were driving around in the West and I'm not sure if they were birches or cottonwoods or even aspens but I decided to take creative license and make them birches. I love this painting!