I was not happy with the color of the water in this painting.  Tried several different ideas, but ended up then deciding none were going to work.  So over the past couple of weeks i’ve Worked with glazes, in an attempt to modulate the too-blue-too-green hue of the water.  i went through a process of adding three glazes over a span of 6 or 7 days.  Glaze was a very thinned mixture of walnut oil and a blue-grey mix.  The result is an improvement, and i think i will proceed with beginning to modulate the hues and start to paint in the waves.

Meanwhile, there’s that big rock.  So with that i’ve Been blocking in three or four basic values (with van dyke brown; burnt umber, and titanium white).  At this stage i am not trying to do any detail on the rocks; but just try to get the values sort of realistic.

I’ve avoided doing plein air painting for years because whenever i tried it i was very uncomfortable with how discombobulated i felt.  Turns out i didn’t have any of the right stuff for a good setup.  Norma got me new all-in-one easel and palette, and Bart got me a big special painting bag to hold everything.  These gifts arrived just in the last day, so tonight we took off to Barr Lake State Park to see how it all worked.  I set up my stuff overlooking the lake and painted whatever was in front of me.  Norma went off with her camera in search of large birds.  The results of my experiment are attached here.  Did this in about 1 1/2 hours.  Not the most novel subject, but i didn’t take time to really think about composition.  I was way excited to see how everything worked. And it worked great!  Such a difference, to have everything in one place and within easy reach.