Leopard painting

The first stage of this painting is now completed.I like to work from the back to the front when painting and drawing and so the furthest elements of the background have been completed first.after purchasing some ready mixed colours to help me out with the dreaded greens i found they were just as inadequate as my previous attempts at mixing and so i sought advice on mixing greens from some very experienced painter colleagues.Thanks to the wise words i now feel ive finally got a handle on mixing greens and am rather pleased with the colours in this painting thus far.much of this background will eventually have elements of the immediate foreground overlapping it and so ive tried to complete this element a little looser than my usual style by using larger brushes and mixing many of the colurs on the board itself.working on a painting of this scale for the first time i can now appreciate the larger handled brushes and rather like the looser,bolder brushstroke kind of approach even though at the moment it still feels entirely unnatural to me.Next up is to tackle the tree that the leopard is resting in and again i hope to be able to complete it a little loosely leaving the cat only in tight detail.