26th painting, still on a roll

It was a good day today, worked at the Open Door Gallery today, so I had ample opportunity to paint, not much going on usually, today we had several visitors because of the Childrens traveling art exhibit, wow, there sure are some talented youngsters out there, I'm amazed at the creativity, I guess I forgot how it is to be a kid, you aren't limited by anything.

Today's painting is of a local spot, not plein Air, no no, still too cold for this girl to go on location, there may be a time when it warms up, but last week was so warm, so, now it's cold and I think I'm catching a cold, woke up with a scratchy throat, now my lungs feel heavy, I'm popping pills (over the counter) and did the nose spray thingy, trying to head it off, I guess tomorrow will tell, one good thing about blogging, I can't give it to you, so it's a good thing. The place of this little painting is the Battle Creek River, several years ago, my Mother and I went on a photo excursion, looking for some pretty areas that weren't too far to travel to, so we did that several times, I've already had a couple of those spots in paintings here on this blog, nice time to spend with my Mama too.

Obviously, it is fall, so many nice colors and the yellow and blue complement each other, of course this is on clayboard, I am addicted to painting on this surface lately, just ordered a bunch more so I won't run out soon, I tried to order the textured clayboard but I didn't find it on either of my on-line ordering excursions (too many this month), ouch! I did start 2 others while I was at the gallery, I'm anxious to work on them, hope I'm not sickly in the morning, one is pansies, and one is another landscape, neither one is on clayboard, I'm tring to keep mixing it up in that area. I laid in the sky color, a mixture of a whitish gray and some cool pink with some blue, then put in the yellow for the trees and then headed into the green and finally added the water area, I know, it looks strange, a pinkish sky with blue sky reflections, but that was how it is in the photo I have, still water, very difficult to pull off, mine is moving a bit more than it really was in the photo, but that's ok too, my decision, artistic license you see. I took my opaque pallet with me (I made sure it was loaded up so I wouldn't run out, been using a lot of them, opaques that is). I put a darker yellow under and added pink into that to give it some variation, then on top of that I added more light yellow, I mixed white into the yellow to make it stand out a bit, then the tree trunks, added light then darks on top, looking for some negative spaces in this tree mass, and worked it back and forth, now the water, I put in the reflection of the trees (always darker than the actual trees) and then floated some blue over the reflections, this worked pretty well, but I did do it in layers, back and forth, then at the last I started to get too dark so I charged in with a lighter blue to get a highlight, keeping the stroke pulling down so it looks like it is a reflection, just a trick I've found that works, you just keep building the detail up until it makes you happy, I like this one, hope you do too.
Goodnight, got to put myself to bed.