New painting - Shimmering Falls finished 3/29/12

Well, even though I have been negligent posting, I have been painting, not as much as I should, since I'm really behind now, but I think I'm changing my approach, now, instead of putting my paintings out as I'm working on it, I've decided to post all levels of each painting when it's all finished, that way, when I link it to Facebook, those who view my work will see the finished piece and then can go to this blog to see the steps, I believe this will be a better approach for me. I still haven't finished the very first painting that I started, so much stuff came up that interrupted my train of thought, and now I'm at a stand still, I see it, it's sitting on the easel and staring at me, but I got diverted when I had the poster to work on, then I was sick, and I found a 16" x 20" Aquabord, and got excited about painting on that surface (that's the next finished painting, I only have a little bit more to do on that one.

Today's painting is is watercolor and gouache, the surface is High Plate Illustration board. I started this one yesterday about 1:30 in the afternoon (I worked the gallery), before I started painting, I took blue painters masking tape and taped all around the edges, the reason for this is to keep the water from separating the sheets of paper making up this surface. I did a rough sketch, then started with the sky, I wanted it to be fairly light so I had quite a bit of water with the blue, then I mixed some brown in the blue to make the light gray for the clouds, and to attempt to make the clouds show up a bit more, I put a bit of opaque white on the tope edge. I then started with the rocks at the left and moved across to the trees at the top, this surface is really absorbent, so it really didn't take long for the paint to sink in enough to keep it from moving together. then the rocks across the middle, I mixed blue, brown, yellow ochre and blue, painting and changing colors as I moved, toward the bottom of the rocks, I added some purple in to cool them down, as I worked the rocks, I kept changing the colors and adding some opaques to add texture, once I got the rocks laid in, I laid a wash of cerulean blue with some prussian blue added for a bit darker blue under the rocks, the first was was very simple.

Then, I started at the top and refined the tree area, I put some blue at the top edge of the trees to indicate farther away, and switched back and forth from green to yellow ochre and back to green, and some blues, I scratched into the tree color to indicate pine trees and some other tree trunks, I really worked up the rocks, adding some burnt sienna and some permanent magenta with the browns and blues and yellow ochre, when that was done, I worked on the foreground rock ledge where the water is cascading, I really laid in the darks, skipping spaces for the water to flow down. It's difficult to explain the layers, I really think you'd have to watch me to see how I work, I really work all over the rocks and the water at this last stage, I felt that the direction of the rocks and the movement of the water were the important part of this composition, I really enjoyed how the paint worked, and how I could really jump into the details fairly fast, of course, you realize that I am not a wimpy painter, I like strong contrast and I really love making the water move, this very last stage is when I jump into the opaques, I started with white, and added some blue in some areas and some green shade in some areas and that's the way it goes, I really like this painting, I think this piece is about the size of a 1/4 sheet, maybe slightly larger, I really enjoyed painting this, I'm unsure exactly where this is. but. I'm thinking it's one of the falls that is on the Black River in the U.P., I really enjoyed this painting and I hope you do too.

The above is the finished, below follow the first through the 4th stages, I just wanted you to see the finish first.