Last of the birches?

Probably not the last time I'll paint birches. I've enjoyed my time spent with these unusual trees. I will continue to learn how to paint them. Meanwhile, this is the final one I will do of this image. To see the earlier attempts go to blog post 'No Scrubbing', January 27.

I continued to run into difficulties with this painting. I had put so much detail into the background but when I finally put in the trees, I discovered they fought with all the foliage. I had to simplify the background to be able to see the trees.

I also wanted to find a way to make the branches lighter and thinner so they also wouldn't take away from the trees so I used watercolor pencil.