Waterworks Park

The Raccoon River is less than a mile away from my studio, its course snaking through a low-lying area that has become a 1500 acre park, being too low for businesses or dwellings. The city draw its water supply from the river so the park is Waterworks Park. Much of the park is covered with old, giant trees, so given how close it is to my home studio I've spent considerable time on the river bank during the pandemic lock down.

Unfortunately, for the past several days we've either had rain or clouds--not the most conducive weather for painting outdoors. So much of my time has been devoted to non-artistic work in the studio like cleaning, sorting, and the like. But I've also had time to work on a studio landscape based on one of my previous outdoor sketches.

"Raccoon Bend, Early May," oil on panel, 9x12

Outdoor painting isn't always about making a saleable painting. It is also about recording information, adding to the painter's visual library, or as one of my teachers used to say, "confronting nature." So even if a painter doesn't make a painting for display when working outdoors, he can widen his appreciation of the subject. An example is "Raccoon Bend, Early May," which had multiple purposes. The most basic was simply to take time to actually paint outdoors. Another purpose was to see the subject clearly and record what it actually looks like.

"Bend in the River," oil on panel, 20x16

When the weather didn't cooperate these last days I started on the landscape below, using the outdoor sketch posted here plus a reference photo. Unlike the outdoor painting, I widened the view. I also punched the colors, added cloud cover (from a different oil sketch) and shadows. While the plein air sketch is an accurate rendering of the colors and far bank, it's obvious that this painting is partly imaginary too.