trempealeau overlook: continuing steps

trempealeau overlook: continuing progress

i continued to work slowly on this painting. having finished the figures a couple of days ago i painted the foreground today. it a large area and i wanted to get it to gain value and color as it moved forward in the picture plane. i used the 1" flat brush for all of this step. the far edge was painted using quinacridone gold and ultra marine blue and hooker's green. working quickly, i added some burnt sienna in areas and cobalt blue with quinacridone gold in stronger concentrations as i moved down the painting. i wanted to carve out the bench top which was pretty shiny from all those seats and reflected a lot of light thus appearing almost white. when i reached the bottom, i went back to the far edge with dark version of burnt umber/ultramarine over quinacridone gold leaves and twigs that went up above the edge and hung over the edge to some degree. when this was starting to dry just a bit i scratched in more grasses with the palette knife. i will have to add some texture to this and try to carve out a relatively "flat" place around the figures and bench while allowing the brush near the precipice to rise up some. this will probably need to happen by subtle value and color changes. i'll  think about it until tomorrow. here is where we are when i left off today.