This was a long hike down the Laurel River with the Julien easel and oils, perhaps my first large on site canvas in oils in a long time. I was struggling with a bad leg and using a walking stick to get down the road. It was toward the end of the vacation in NC. Here is the scene I was working from. Over the course of the day the river rose and the lighting changed a lot. You could tell it had rained by all the little rivulets down the rock faces and out of the foliage that seeped across the trail into the river.
There was a steady trickle of onlookers and their dogs. I sketched out the scene leaving out all the trees and focusing on the river. There came a point where I couldn’t go further with it. I had overdrawn a few places and couldn’t back things up to blank. So I began to add in the color.
I had prepared for a longer stay and rain. The previous days’ rains had muddied the river into the jade and ochre shades I was working with. People with their families and dogs came by from both directions, but the rain kept down the traffic and the well-meaning interruptions. I had done a study earlier in the week that had a Matisse-like quality at the top of the scene. When that happens in a painting, something that charms me, I often go blind to the rest of the painting, so in this case it felt like two different people painted the upper and lower portions.
But I was looking for two things in this bigger piece - colors that were truer to nature and some expression of the flow of the river around the rocks and over the little ledge. So began a long and uneven journey over the next month interrupted by extensive travel. Down at the bottom of this entry is a clip that shows all the different angles I tried. When I shared states with a friend, he offered to try some Photoshop ideas out. It was interesting but I ended up largely sticking to my original plan. The few things that survived almost from the beginning were the foreground in violet red with blue/green leaves and the river boulder done in charcoal and lime green. Everything else went through a train of different treatments.
I finally did hit upon a color solution for the portion of the river towards the near bank. It was yellow ochre, thalo blue, zinc yellow and zinc white. Once I had the right color I was ready to consolidate this complex field of attempts at water and make it be simpler. Another place that was exciting was when I realized it was time to put in the tree trunks. I loaded up a brush and laid them down over the downstream section of the painting - a few big bold brush strokes that felt almost calligraphic and immediately improved the composition. Later I added the foliage putting down blocks of color in the general areas and letting them dry. I came back later and used white and yellow to cut in and shape the leaves. On the far bank I added some detail on leaves and a black/red descending line to suggest a pathway.
Update one year later. I delivered this as a gift to a friend who turned 100 last year. Last week, after looking at this for that interval, I returned to borrow the painting to adjust a few things. I wanted to change the color of the upstream water nearest the viewer to a more greenish hue to better suggest a shadow, and also because I thought the all ochre river didn’t work at all. It seemed to be color blind. Once I worked on that I also reworked the greenery on the far shore and then used a turpentine soaked paper towel to give the colors a softer look and to remove some of the colors. The easel I have made this easy because it converts to a horizontal plane.
Finally, I added a tree trunk and some branches on the right side of the painting, something I had resisted for a long time. But it felt right the minute I did it, like adding that necessary note to complete a chord.
Here’s the clip with the various detours before I reached the end. I like bits and pieces of many of these but I couldn’t collage them all together because they were all part of a state that got left behind. If there is another state that I still like, it’s the one shown in the still shot that begins the clip.