Waterworks Bridge

Last Saturday our sketch group decided it was time to check out any early budding and spring flowers in Waterworks Park, the enormous park along the Raccoon River, not far from my home studio. The weather has been warming so that there is a faint glow of green and here and there pink-red halos, but no outright flowers and no fully=leafed trees. But the sun was bright in the cold spring air. 

"Waterworks Bridge," wc on paper, 5x14

I sat in my car and sketched this view of an old bridge across the Raccoon River that now carries pedestrians and cyclists into deeper woods, eventually leading to Greenwood Park, a mile or two north, where the Des Moines Art Center is located. This old steel truss bridge probably dates back a century, and it's appropriately rusted and worn. In order to get as much of the approach and a bit of the river into the image I adopted a wide panorama for this one. I sketched the main structure of the bridge but omitted parts that would have been confusing, in favor of the overall image. The trees at either end were actually present, but the near bushes and distant tree line were invented. As many landscape painters do, I "pushed" the chroma of the near bushes and distant trees as well as the blue of the water. In reality the Raccoon is often muddy=brown in spring.