Monday, August 27

With the under paint of the water set up a little I can come in with green on top of the blue and vise versa without the purity of the color being polluted. There is a current running up the center so the water is quite turbulent and not showing much reflection. Instead it seems to be a mixture of the blue sky and greens of the river.  I carefully observe the characteristics of the water and try to capture that as best I can, taking note of where the main concentrations of highlights are.  There are some dark grasses growing out of the water over to the right where some of it is catching the reflections of the sun.  With the use of the highlights I can get the viewer to follow along a path through the water.

I now can work on the foreground vegetation, which overlaps some of the water at the bottom.  First I put some darker shapes in for the volcanic rock by the side of the stream, making sure they catch some sun on the edges, keeping in mind that much of this will be covered over with the grasses.

Now with a larger brush I can mass in some of the greens of the grass and use a pallet knife on top to get the finer stalks from the dried grasses.  I still want a little detail in a few areas down near the bottom; there I used a smaller number two brush to show some of the yellow tops of the grass in the middle.  Then used it again to bring in some of the green blades that are bent catching the sunlight.