further progress on "a few stragglers"

next stages of "a few stragglers"

#4 round sable (for scale) and  duck

only a little time to paint today. i thought that the base of the mountain nearest to us the viewers was too light in value so i darkened it with a loose wash of cerulean blue, permanent alizarin crimson, and raw sienna with a mostly violet gray bent to contrast with the yellow of the bushes. this was graded from bottom to top to add a little depth. i then put in the ducks, which i did decide to change to mallards- two drakes and a hen.  i did these wet-in-wet using a #4 round brush with ultramarine blue and hookers green on the drakes' heads and most of the umbers and siennas on the bodies with some cobalt for mixing toward a gray.  these later combinations for the entirety of the hen.  when i work wet-in-wet i frequently don't use enough pigment and it dries lighter than i had intended.  if that is the case here (and i fear it may be) i can add some darker over washes to correct this. these were painted at the same time as their respective reflections to give a tie-in for each and i then softened the edges of both the ducks and reflections on the sides and bottoms (away from the light) so they would seem part of the painting and not "stuck in." i also tried to break up the reflections to make it seem they were affected by ripples in the water.

the only things left are to add the rest of the reflections on the water to include the mountain and sky which hopefully i can do later today or tomorrow.