Greenwood the Great
As Pp pointed out, the person out with a bow in the Greenwood is a Northern Elf. Therefore he (or she, I am undecided on this matter) has a whippet. If he were a Southern Elf it would be a saluki. Western Elves should probably have either greyhounds or wolfhounds...
Now I look at it again, I wonder if I should actually have painted in the sunbeams rather than just allowing the fallen leaves to be picked out by sun - but I'm pleased with the mysterious dark shadows anyway. The consensus on the squirrel was for red, but it's so tiny I'm not sure it's really distinguishable. The painting is about 2ft square in real life, so possibly a bit large to translate well to the screen. I painted it as a present for my mother, who is very fond of woodland in spring, and who, back in the 50's bought Lord of the Rings as it came out and had to wait on tenterhooks to see what would happen in the end...
Colour palette here is as usual ultramarine and burnt sienna mixed with a little titanium white to make various shades of grey (I so love Payne's Grey!). I used no black at all. The bright areas are mixed with Azo yellow medium, which is a bright daffodil yellow, and I mixed it with burnt sienna for the fallen leaves, and with Phthalo Green (Blue Shade) to get a brilliant green for the young beech leaves. I've struggled to get that bright springlike translucent green in the past, using cobalt green, as cobalt seems to make a muddier colour when mixed. Phthalo green is a lot more translucent and works better in layers: now I've worked this out I can see me using it a lot! All the paints are W&N Finity, apart from the ultramarine blue which is a huge no-name tube I bought cheap at The Works years ago, which seems to do the job perfectly well as a mixer though I think the W&N ultramarine is a bit less muddy if you are using it on its own.