new project: landscape/waterscape in the fall

for this next painting i have decided to continue with some landscapes. i almost always like to put some figures in these and have elected to include some ducks.  i took photos of some teals up at a lake in northern wisconsin (lost land lake) this last summer.  i may turn them into mallards...we'll see. the land/waterscape was adapted from a photo we took of a lake with mountains and scattered yellow deciduous (?aspen, oak?) trees and bushes amongst the predominant pines, firs, and spruce. the first picture i darkened somewhat so that you could see the drawing which was very simple. it shows only basic placement of the major land structures, reflections in the water and where i will probably put the ducks. i may or may not put some "vees" of migrating birds in the sky at the end but have lightly indicated a likely spot for them if i do. because of the darkening of the photo the colors are darker and bluer than actual.

drawing and first washes for "a few stragglers"

after drawing the scene on a piece of 140# rough fabriano artistico paper i  put in the sky with a graded wash of cobalt blue grayed with raw umber using a #12 kolinski sable round brush (kalish brand).  as i said the actual is quite a bit less "sweet" than i appears here. because i wanted to see how the paint would react i "pushed" a brush loaded with quinacridone gold into the slightly dry (but still pretty damp) sky and ended up finishing the yellow tree. i wanted to see if i would get a soft effect that still would stand out...i think it did.  from there i put in the reflections of the first tier bushes with mid value quinacridone gold and oxide of chromium.

next washes of "a few stragglers"

after that dried almost completely i put in the most distant mountainside with a slightly darker version of the cobalt blue/raw umber mixture that was also slightly grayer owing to the larger proportion of raw umber.  i softened this at the bottom. the next step was to actually paint the first row of bushes on the shore just a little darker than their respective reflections. lastly in this step, i painted in the darker pine/fir forest that makes up a large part of the mountain top with a mixture of cobalt blue and raw sienna, to make a gray green, softening those areas where i wanted to lose the edge as i went along.