Tracy brought some of her work with her to show us.
This painting is on her web site (as I type this in 2016)

She started out with a rough outline of the tree trunks.

The blue sky goes in first so that it will show through the foliage.
She used several different saturations of the blue by mixing some
white paint into the blue. That makes the background more interesting.

Tracy paints mostly with a small palette knife. She has two
One has a sharp point and the other has a more rounded point.

Here is a closeup. You can see the one on the left is more rounded.
She uses the sharp point on wooden panels and the more rounded
knife on canvas. The sharp knife will cut the canvas.

She is using the round knife on the canvas panel tonight.
Some basic shapes of color go in to start.

After the dark spots are in, Tracy goes over them lightly with
thick white paint. When the white is placed gently over the dark,
the darker color will show through.

In this photo, Tracy is adding some branches.

In this photo, she is outlining the trunks using a rigger brush.
Tracy uses Payne's Gray instead of black because black is too dark.

The foliage is put down using random spaces of color with the palette knife.
Tracy puts down the colors in the following order:

Dark Green
Green
Indian Yellow
Yellow
Red

Placing the colors in that order keeps them from becoming muddy.

Here you can see some Dark Green and Green in place.

The Indian Yellow is in, and the Yellow is going in.

The Red goes in last.

Lastly, Tracy uses the rigger brush to outline areas of color.
That helps define the color areas in the tree trunks.

Here is the finished painting.

Thank you, Tracy for a spectacular demonstration.