Doggy splashed
May foliage and reflections, Bradford on Avon.
This scene is of a little inlet/loop off the main river at Bradford-on-Avon.
There’s a gentle slope down into the water, presumably with an historical use, where lots of dogs now run in for a bit of fun, chasing ducks and the like. I parked my easel right on the middle of this slope and trusted to luck. As with frequently painting in full sun, this was because I can’t help but put the composition first.
This exact viewpoint provided a range of different types of tree at various distances, some seen through gaps interspersed just perfectly. That’s a pretty rare thing on the rivers around here at least, when it comes to full-foliage time. In addition, the rest of the composition seemed well balanced around it; I particularly liked the muddy bank in the left corner and the few rocks in the shallow water.
It was a cloudy afternoon, with sporadic sun bursts. I’d overworked a painting earlier in the day of an old granary building nearby. That had been a subject of such promise that I was not in a great mood about my effort. I aimed to keep this one concise, with a determined eye on the earliest acceptable point to stop. I also used the bigger mop brush for more of the painting – trying to remain experimental to a degree.
Depicting water is always a big challenge for me at the moment. Being – like the sky – not a static thing, I want to develop a way of depicting the experience of its nature, rather than how it may appear in a photograph (ie a static moment in time).
In terms of observation and simplifying it, I now note first not where the tree reflections are, but rather where they are not, ie. where the sky holes are.
Here, I painted these in roughly with a pale tone of the sky colour, leaving the rest of the paper white. Then I mixed up a few strong washes of green and brown. Finally I painted the whole of the tree reflections very quickly in one wet-against-wet wash from left to right, with a combination of vertical and horizontal strokes, guided by (ie. painting around) my ‘sky hole’ patches on the paper.
The scene (no dogs at this moment)
What a lovely watercolor interpretation of an ordinary scene. Thanks for sharing your feelings about the ups and downs of painting, and explaining your process. Very much appreciated.
Thanks, Patricia.
Jem, Thank you for the description of the process, especially the “sky hoes” In the water! Plein air throws up so many possibilities with the light changing, I appreciate your response to what the elements are and a way through, even if it is frustrating at times.
Meg
Thank you Meg.
A lovely composition with good tonal contrast and the use of greens, which is always an artist’s nightmare.
Many people would pass by this scene for a paintable subject but you have managed not only to have captured it but have made it much more interesting.
Thanks Mel.
As I just mentioned to Stephen, I think we need to remind ourselves sometimes to be creative in making changes to things, like the greens, regardless of what is in front of us – if there is not much variety in the reality.
Re. the composition, I think there was a combination of things here that you don’t find so conveniently laid out very often, and the central willow tree particularly had a lot of character. Plus I wanted to take on the challenge of some water while I was there.
Nice to see the photo to show how you selected certain features and ignored others. I am prone to copy the photo too much.
Hi Stephen.
It is something I think we’re all prone to do with photos, if it is our only source of information.
It’s also easy to slip into copying all sorts of detail when working from life. I try to remind myself to allow a lot of room to be creative in the interpretation, allowing ommission of much information. When working from life you can combine that with picking and choosing little bits detail where needed. If you look at the right-most tree in the painting, depicted with mainly horizontal strokes, this struck me that way in life, but if worked from the photo it wouldn’t strike me nearly as much that horizontal was the way to go in summing up its nature.