Seasonal Forest
polycounter lvl 5
Hey guys, this is a bit scary for me as I have always been mainly a 3D artist but I really would love to teach myself how to paint! I used to do painting and life drawing etc... but for the last few years have done only 3D. Anyway I started today with my first speedpaint! Each one was 30 mins to an hour. I'm going to try to do four seasons of forests and then practice and redo it in a month or so and see if I have made any progress. In the meantime please crit away! Thanks! 
Replies
These are already looking really nice in that you've definitely captured different seasons although they're not obvious exactly what seasons (which isn't a bad thing!).
I totally appreciate if you're strapped for time but if you can, I'd definitely recommend combining your three 30 minutes spent here into a single painting to labour over it more while studying late masters and modern veterans. 30 minutes studying how the old masters applied a balance of values, brush economy, colours, composition and perspective can do wonders
Upper left - The various hues in the middle-bottom are fantastic but it could use sparsely populated bright values across some of the composition. The two long vertical negative spaces in the trees to the left 40% and right 75% of the composition are fighting against the flow of everything a little. Maybe it'd be more effective to interrupt the light value a little in one of them? This way the eye can start to go on a bit more of a journey rather than look at the entire piece at the same time. The Orange and Blue hues work really well for this one!
Upper right - This one's captured the time of day perfect
Lower left - Nice colour choice! In an almost opposite fashion to the first image, the brighter values in is a little too overblown. Or at least some atmospheric fog might make for an effective counterbalance but having some of the further trees lighter in value (but don't reduce their saturation too much!). The shadows falling across the flowers on the field could have some interesting values within it and with a light this bright, there could be some really interesting tones along the border of the shadows. In the shadows, some taller plants near the shadow's edge may even still catch some specks of bright light.
Bottom right - Again nice colours! Is this winter? The warm hues on the ground are a brilliant touch! It's great how the ground or shot looks slanted and it would probably look more interesting if there was a greater variation in spacing and depth. For example in the centre of the composition, the birds in the sky next to thin branches, the bottom of the trees in the distance, the horizon they're on and where the light falls are all too parallel to one another so there's a certain false oddity to it compared to how natural the trees to the left and right foreground have grown.
You could make use of colour in shadows and having foreground and mid-ground elements bridge more, whether it's a path or a more gradual distribution of trees from near to far.
I sincerely hope that helps and I'm really sorry for the waffling - it's very late for me at the moment
Best of luck and keep posting your updates!
Best regards,
Gavin