My last week here I started 2 paintings at the French Broad River just across the bridge from Hot Springs. There’s a path that passes under the bridge into a series of cabins and connects with the Appalachian Trail. I hauled my gear upstream across a rocky bed shielded from view by some woods and set up where I could get a good view of the bridge in one direction and the mountain range in another. It was clear and a little windy, great conditions for painting. I started with the upstream view of the mountain range and switched to a larger canvas to start the downstream view of the bridge. I had just sold a scene of this same bridge done from a different location and would have to deliver it to the new owner soon, so I wanted another scene of this site to replace it. Here are photos and initial state views of these works. The mountain scene was hard to do because the sunlight was so strong in the sky and as reflected in the river.
I was short of time when I turned to the bridge, so I got only a crude bit of drawing done and then filled in some basic shapes. I was mostly interested in the water and rocks.
I came back a couple of more days to work on both scenes. I also worked a good bit on the bridge scene back at the studio to correct mistakes out in the field and bring some order to the scene. Each day was as beautiful as the last. It was a real reward for having lost time to COVID and visits by guests. On the third day, two days before I’d have to drive home to Gulfport, I got out there in the afternoon instead of the morning. This resulted in a big change to the mountain scene, which I really enjoyed. The afternoon light cast long shadows on the mountain faces and changed the light on the river. I had several exciting stretches of painting there where I was reworking the original scene and the new scene fell into place so naturally. The shadows lengthened and I followed their path as they changed the composition and color. Working on the rocks in a broader set of colors was interesting. I added some rusty red to the rocks in the foreground and this worked well.
Once more I spent less time on the bridge painting but I did make some headway with it. While I was working a fly fisherman came along and tried his luck. That was great to watch and I grabbed a snapshot of him in case I wanted to add a figure later. I added a sky blue glaze and was very happy with how it turned out.
Back in Gulfport, I stole time to paint here and there and reached a really nice place with the upstream painting, especially the nearest trees on the right bank of the river. I worked into those trees to give them better shape and pierce them with sky and other background colors. I also spent a good while on the water, deepening the blue and catching the shapes the foam makes around the rocks.
I’m still at work on the bridge scene, just too many details and competing passages. It’s probably a couple of weeks out from being finished. Here is where it is right now. I have spent time on the perspective and the bridge rails.
It took effort to get the river bank in proper relation to the rest of the perspective. For some reason I continued to resist doing it as a straight horizontal line. I added the flyfisherman at the end, to keep a promise to add more figures into my landscapes in the future.
