Squeeze out blobs of white, ultramarine blue and burnt umber on to different areas of your palette.  With the large 1½in paintbrush, mix a lot of white and a little blue with some water to make a puddle of very pale blue.

Cover the canvas with the pale blue mix.  Although it will eventually become the sky and path, at this stage you are just giving the canvas a covering of paint.  Go around the edges of the canvas as you work down.

As you paint towards the bottom of the canvas, start to add more blue into the mix and add burnt umber into your puddle to make various greys.  A paler grey will become the path and a darker grey will start to build up depth behind the trees. Put your brush in water so it doesn’t dry out and leave the canvas to dry a little.

After the first layer is dry, mix burnt umber, ultramarine blue and a touch of medium yellow (but no white) to make a very dark tone.  Add this to the lower tree area.

Place blobs of the three yellows and more ultramarine blue onto the palette.

Dab the sponge into a yellow then lightly dab it onto areas of the canvas for patches of leaves.  Move your hand into different positions as you work so that you don’t make a matching pattern.

Do the same with another yellow, white, then yellow ochre.  Leave open spaces at the tops of the trees.  Add patches of burnt umber then burnt sienna.

Dip your sponge into another yellow then ultramarine blue; the colours will mix together as you sponge to give varying greens.  Carry on until you have created the canopy of trees.

Sponge onto the grey foreground the fallen leaves using burnt umber.  Then add bushes at the sides with a blue and yellow mix.

Leave to dry a little.

Using a medium-size Round brush, tidy the horizon line with the dark colours previously used in this area.

Make a purple grey mix from ultramarine blue and white with a touch of red. Add the path by painting back over some of the stray sponging with the mix. Paint in horizontal streaks, and vary the light and dark patches by adding more or less white as the shadows fall across the path.

Stipple on the leaf litter again in a few places with a dry bristle brush.  Follow where the dark shadows fall across and onto the sides of the path.  Add burnt umber and burnt sienna to the patches of fallen leaves in dark areas, and yellow ochre, a green made from yellow and blue, and white to the light areas.

Add distant tree trunks with a mix of burnt umber, ultramarine blue and a little white.  Use the No. 10 Round and, starting at the bottom of the trunk, drag the brush upwards then lift it off towards the top to make the trunks tall, thin and elegant.  As the trunks and branches are covered by leaves, leave gaps – think of painting branches in Morse code… dot, dot, dash…

Make the foreground trees slightly wider and darker.  Try to keep the left-hand side of the trunk darker and add patches of light to the right-hand side.

Use the Rigger to add lots of branches.  Make a puddle of the blue and brown mix, roll the Rigger in this then drag the brush along the branch and off at the end.

Sponge a few clusters of leaves over the branches in a few places.

Add a couple of figures, one a with a red coat and one with a blue coat.  Add a little white in patches to their right-hand sides and make them a little darker on their left-hand sides.

Leave to dry.

To add the sunlight falling through the trees, mix a very week puddle of Daler-Rowney shimmering gold with water.  Dip the ½in soft bristle brush into the puddle, but take off the surplus paint by dabbing on rag or kitchen roll.

Starting from the light areas in the trees about half way up, drag the brush diagonally across the picture, across the dark areas and onto the path.  Don’t go mad; just add a few streaks then stop and stand back and look at the picture before adding more.

With a small brush, add dots of a stronger mix of this paint onto some of the light patches of the lower leaves and onto the light areas in the foreground.  Again, paint a little then add a little more if required.  It’s very easy to overdo it.