Banana Trees Almost Done

I think this is almost done now. I've adjusted the banana leaves to the right, added highlights and shadows to foliage here and there, and added details to the background. I'll keep fussing with it, no doubt, but then it's time to let it sit while I figure out of anything still doesn't feel right about it.

By the way, for any acrylic artists out there, I only recently found something called a Masterson's Sta-Wet palette that changed my whole way of working. It's a lidded plastic box that you line with a wet sponge and their special palette paper. What always discouraged me about acrylics before was how quickly they dried while I worked. Seemed I spent more time remixing colors that had dried out than painting. With this palette, even small amounts of paint will stay wet for many days.

Beginning Banana Trees

This work in progress looked like this about a month ago. A blank 24 x 40 canvas had been sitting on my easel for over a year while I pondered what to do. After a recent trip to Kauai, I decided to fill it with banana trees. There are no wild monkeys on Kauai (this one's from my daughter's Thailand photos), but a friend thought there were when she heard a monkey-like screeching outside our window. It turned out to be a tree branch scraping against a gutter, but I had hoped to discover a creature like this instead.