I Don't Care What Color The Water Actually Is

When I started this one I said to myself "I don't care what color the water actually is", so I just tried to stay true to the values. I had to repaint the grassy area, since it was too dark originally. Now that I'm  done and looking at the picture, the sky turned out too dark. Darn! While I was painting I noticed how light the sky was and thought I had my paint light enough.

#235 - Bridge In Minnehaha Park - 8" x 8" - paper

Overall, I am feeling less intimated about approaching a landscape painting (a/k/a - those things in life with many, many elements to figure out), at least in the comfort of my home. It's easier to say to myself, I think I'm going to try this part in this way and see what happens and that is a good place to be.

Lately, I've also been thinking about super vivid mode. My camera has a setting called super vivid and it helps create beautiful pictures. Sometimes, it feels to me like it's cheating a bit, by enhancing reality. This slightly puritanical outlook carries over into my painting. If the colors are on the muddy side in my source material, I tend to stay too faithful to that and that doesn't make a very interesting painting. It's also a weird quirk, since I love saturated colors. With this one, I turned up the super vivid setting in my head, although I went more muddy with the bridge and the upper trees and sky since they were very muted in my picture.