Painting #363 - Jan 22 - Going to be busy today, so I got this done early

The Opening reception for the Carnegie Center for The Arts in Three Rivers is today, so I jumped right on that painting that I was trying to get done yesterday to finish it. I am sure that the afternoon is going to be very busy, since we have not done any major shopping lately in addition to the show, and I'm certain that we will be dinning out too, so just in case that I get to exhausted from all that activity (I'm getting so I don't have the same stamina anymore, I used to be able to go and go and go, but something happens when you turn 55, I do believe that's the magic number when things really go downhill, and since I passed that almost 11 years ago, you guessed it, I'm much less able to do that, gaining weight will have something to do with that too, or maybe it's the other way around, the weight is from doing less, I really think it's both).

this little painting, again, is on 300 lb. watercolor paper (it's 4" x 6" again, I have to use up those pieces I cut for the postcards), I've been experimenting with ways to start things, so I used the acrylics to lay in the beginning washes, when that was dry, I switched to the gouache, I feel much more comfortable with the gouache, maybe it has to do with the acrylics drying so fast, I have enjoyed the acrylics, but the gouache is much easier to manipulate. At any rate, I then started to build up the background trees, since the sky is sort of a pinkish color, I used magenta added to the green, well, that was too dark, so I just thinned it down and added more magenta, that worked, then I moved to the water, and worked that up, the foreground weeds were put in last, and finally I added a skim of white to add the effect of the water, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.