Rivulet

This new oil painting has been on the easel for a few weeks. The subject of water comes back into my work again and again, most commonly in oils. This work is a distillation of a reference image and personal observations on many creeks and rivers. The idea is to show the many features of moving water--transparency, refraction, reflection, shine, splash, and so on. The rocky bank was an interesting subject, as well. I actually close-cropped a considerably larger photo, then enlarged the result. 

"Rivulet," oil on panel, 8x16

To transfer the photo reference image to my support I simply drew in the boulders, fallen tree, and foliage. For the rocky bottom of the stream I roughed in a series of circles, ovals, and other geometric figures, using raw umber..I began with a white support, and in retrospect might have benefited from toning it. On the other hand, working somewhat transparently gave sections of the painting a nice glow.

Once I had the basic plan on the support I immediately began to vary my palette, adding earth reds, ochres, umbers and occasional brighter passages. Once the white of the support was completely covered I began working in dark passages beginning at upper left, then working across and down in a relatively orderly way. That is, left to right and up to down. Although sometimes I try to work to a complete finish in each region before moving on, many times I work to a certain level of finish, stop for a time (to allow undercoats to dry, for example), then go through the entire piece again, refining, then refining again, as I did here. 

The most difficult aspect of moving water (for me anyway) is splashes and reflection. It's awfully easy to overwork moving water, tempting to add just one more wave, one more sparkle, one more tiny ripple. But in the end I have to exercise a lot of care not to overwork. Another crucial issue is maintaining soft edges for objects below the surface. In fact it's partly the play of soft and had edges that make this kind of painting work. 

This is probably the final iteration of this work, but you'll notice I haven't signed it yet.