On the River

As the routine of drawing and painting has settled down from my jaunt to the Adirondacks I've managed a number of trips to one of my favorite spots along the right bank of the Raccoon River. The spot is in a huge parkland of meadows and woods with the river meandering through. It's full of silty runoff from farms upstream and filled beyond limits with nitrates used on corn and soybeans, so the water is often a murky green/brown that reflects the blue-grey sky. When you look away from the sun the water is darker and smooth.

"Raccoon Bend, July 2021," oil on panel, 9x12

This painting is from a session this week. The sun was low above the eastern horizon, slanting into the distant trees. At this point the river flows in a big bend, coming from the right (west) and curving around to run almost directly toward my painting spot before bending again toward the north. That is, my position faced southwest. I toned a small panel with a very thin wash of burnt sienna, except the sky, which I left white. Next I sketched in the major shapes of the trees and river banks, then established darker and lighter values. The thin underpainting dries very quickly if you thin your paint with turpentine. Once satisfied with general values and shapes I quickly sketched the sky using cerulean blue and white. The darkest darks and darkest greens came next, then middle values of greens in warm mixes with cad lemon and various greens and blues, then cooler greens made by mixing white and cad lemon with darker greens. The distant river bank is actually a dull yellow ochre, but I let the red underpainting show through and underlined it with a very dark red that fades into very dark green at the extreme of the river bend (right). The entire study took about 90 minutes.