Painting #231 - Sept 12 - SWMWS meeting tonight

SWMWS, that stands for South West Michigan Watercolor Society, of which I'm the secretary, well, of course I was late, by at least 7 or 8 min. and so I missed the very first part of the meeting, I don't know why, I decided to fix myself a bit of something to eat before I left, I've decided to start a diet and I'm trying to get myself in the habit of eating regular meals, plus snacks, so I'm thinking I need to get up in the morning earlier, so that's going to mean get to bed earlier at night, it's going to be tough, since I am not a morning person, I can stay up almost all night, but I pay for it in the morning. One of the important things about this diet is that you must keep your metabolism working, and that means eat something frequently, small somethings I might add. We'll see how this works, with this particular diet, it's similar to weight watchers because they give you recipe's and a log to keep track of your food, plus I have to start an exercise plan, I'm going to start that slow, and I'm not sure I want to take the pills they sent, I'm not sure about that, but it says they are basically vitamins and green tea with some gaurauna, what ever that is. I'm thinking I may contact the Dr. office before I start that, but I do want to loose the weight, and the inches, I had quit walking, it's been over a year now, just about a year and a half, and since then I've really gained about 15-20 lbs, not good, and I really don't like the way I look in my clothes, so you can ask how it's going, if I don't like it, I have 6 weeks to get a full refund, we'll see.

Now, I had my watercolor meeting tonight, so, I didn't get the painting done, let alone started, before I left, so I had to find something to paint when I got home, I have painted this scene several times, and I just don't seem to get tired of it. This place is special in my memories, we (my husband and I), took our mothers to the Keewenau Peninsula (that's in Michigan's U.P.), this is the Sturgeon River, and in the photo, my husband and I were standing on that little patch of ground in front of the yellow bush on the left, but the figures were so small, there was no way that I could get them in there successfully.

I started with the sky, this time I mixed some white with some costal fog and added periwinkle blue and some violet, to get the lavender/gray color in the sky. Then the middle tone green and so on. I decided to drop in the green shadows for the trees in the water, then I started to get some detail in the tree line and I just worked my way forward, I put in about 3 layers of greens and some yellow with purple added, then I finished the trees in the foreground and put in some tree trunks, I defined the bank with some brown and worked up the water by laying some dry brush white over the top at the small fall level, then I switched it to a turquoise and did the same thing in the green reflections, I then added the rocks and put some white on the back ground water, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.