I painted this from under the covered bridge at Vickery Creek in Roswell. You can climb down to the river from the bridge that crosses the creek and follow it up or down. This day it had been raining and the volume of water was significant. The color was not it’s usual emerald green but more of a liquid chocolate.
I’ve started doing small thumbnail pencil drawings before beginning painting, I find this helps me — often my first idea is not the best or just wont work so a small little sketch can help me see problems before I commit to paint. They are not overly attractive but they are useful. I also use a small view finder I’ve cut out of black mat board and I simply trace this on to the pad for the right proportion.
I’ve been studying several books on landscape painting and Edgar Payne’s Composition of Outdoor Painting I have found to help me quite a bit. The circular motion is brought back around by the foreground tree to left. This view is split into three distinct areas—foreground, mid-ground, and background. The color is quite true to the actual scene but I blued out that background a bit to push it back. All the action is in the mid ground where the paint get a bit thick and helps explain the form of the slight drop off. The foreground has some green on the moss covered rocks that help bring them forward.
All in all, l I was very satisfied with this—It’s one of my best from the 100 or so I’ve done in this format over the last year.