#62, glad this was done.

This is the painting that I told you I painted yesterday, so glad I was smart and got this done yesterday, we left today at 8:30 a.m. and didn't get home until 7:30 p.m., I really did work, but it was at my knitting, I can't just go and do nothing, so I finished a sweater vest that I've been working on so it was a good day even though I didn't get to paint, sometimes you just have to do stuff with your family, I surely don't want my husband to get an attitude about my art, he did ask me last week "and how long are you going to be doing this painting a day?", well, I told him and he just said "great, no sleep for a year", so I have to get my stuff done earlier, I'm going to work on that, and I don't want my husband to be mad at me because I wait until it's time for him to be home before I get my painting done, that has to stop, my reason for doing this blog was to get me to paint, but not at the expense of my marriage (I will certainly give that my best effort). Ok, now I must talk about my painting.

This is the first painting I started yesterday, but the other one really grabbed me, anyway, this is a nice painting and went very well, I didn't have as much time to dwell on excess detail, when I got done with the other one I only had about an hour and fifteen min. to finish it before it was time to go home, and I only had about 15 or 20 min. in it to start, so that's pretty quick, I am hoping that I can get faster with all of them, time will tell.

I did a rendition of this painting about 27 years ago, I entered it in The Michigan Area Competition at the Art Center of Battle Creek, I didn't get an award, but, I then put it in their rental gallery and sold it there. This one, being a square, is shortened a bit, which makes it look wider, or else, I tried to put too much of it in the picture, who cares, it looks pretty good to me. I started with purple/gray/white for the sky then went in with a pinky/gray color for the far away branches and the really spring green for those willows in the background, the trees were put in somewhere in the middle, then I put the water in with the grayed down blue with white in it, then the banks on each side, I put some rock shapes in with a very light gray, just so I could tell where they were. Once that was dry, I dry brushed some green on top of the brown on the bank, there wasn't much green, but some spots of it, the left side had some reddish twigs growing up behind the foreground tree there which helped with the reddish color of the foreground bank and water, then I started fine tuning the background by putting in some pale brown twigs to indicate some darker small trees growing there and then I did the water, I usually do the water last but this time, I wanted to make sure you could see some of the rocks in the foreground water, so I put them in first and then started the wave action with the blue, it was really cool how quickly that worked out, then the bank on the right side, I really started getting into the little bunch of rocks and wood and twigs and stones there right in front, then I just continued with that, somewhere in there I jumped in to get the trees in the background, I added some darker tree shapes and it started to pull together, I really like this little painting and sure hope you do too.