RUSHING WATER PART 2

A STREAM WITH RUSHING WATER - BACKGROUND AND FINISHING WATER

Before proceeding with the background, I strengthened my rock  shapes until they were the way I waned them.

The last thing I did from the previous post was to put in a warm wash for a background, indicating vertical trees. The next step is to find the shapes I wanted for the background. Laying a sheet of CANSON tracing paper over the painting, I shaded in the places where I wanted my tree shapes to be. This way I was not damaging my paper with excess pencil marks while I played around with shapes. You can use charcoal or crayon or marker on the tracing paper to more quickly make the shapes.

Another way to do this is to tear strips of colored paper into general shapes and arrange them over your paper. You can move these around until you know how you want your background to look.

I used a sponging technique on the trees. When doing trees, TRY TO LEAVE PLACES THAT BIRDS CAN FLY THROUGH.  I dampened a small natural sponge, blotting out a lot of the moisture with a paper towel. Since my background had a lot of yellow, I didn't need to sponge yellow in. So I sponged a pale yellow green over anything that would have any shade of green in it. Dry that layer. Add some blue or darker green to the light green mix until you have a medium green, and sponge it over all greens that are a medium shade or darker. Dry that.

Now you THINK I'm going to tell you to go to the darkest green...but NOT YET. I am setting this up by values, and my oranges and reds are a lighter value than the dark greens. So I sponge in anything that will be orange or red. Dry. Sponge in a few reds...don't overdo those. NOW go back with a dark green and sponge in those darkest greens. 

You can see I saved a little space for my fisherman in the distance. 

I covered up my water and spattered a little over the trees. (some blues and reds). 

Now it's time to put your negative painting to work. Negative paint around the tree branches and trunks. Put some high in the distant trees and lower in the close trees. Keep it lighter in the distance. Paint in some grasses, some fir branches, or some shadows in places that need attention. Paint the waders and hat on the fisherman.

I am generally happy with the results. I have the blurred area on the right to resolve, and I want to put a few more waves in the river, but overall, I like the way it is turning out. It's quite bright, but that's how I think about fall.