Swamp Drawing

There are a lot of opportunities to takes pictures of water, boats, docks and even some beaches here in the Northern Neck of Virginia. There are even more opportunities to visit, photograph, draw and paint swamp land.

I took a series of photos to show my progress on this particular pastel painting starting with an underpainting. You can also see my reference photo. In real life, the colors were bolder than what you see in the photo. I'm not sure if I actually captured the colors and values accurately... and of course, the photo of the painting may not translate accurately either. But here goes:

 This is the initial underpainting and the reference photo I took recently. It was low tide and those are mud flats with logs in the "beach" area.

 

My husband complained that the sky had become too dark. I wasn't happy at this point with the bright orange in the trees across the water and the grasses in behind the tree.

Better.

 

And Finished:

This is 8X10 on sanded paper.