It's rare that I actually really like something I paint — AND actually remember to photograph the painting process. This piece is one that actually mostly satisfies both those requirements. So I thought I'd share how I went about it. 

STEP 1: Roughing in the design with a thin mix of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue.

You will notice the blurred image of a scraped painting. This was actually my third attempt to get something satisfactory on this canvas. I scraped the previous two attempts from other days and mixed what remained together, creating the brown undertone. Third time's the charm!

So I may have forgotten to take a picture of the next step, which was to put in the largest areas of darks, like in the top half of the above image. STEP 3 was the bottom half, when a shaft of sun illuminated that cluster of rocks and water. Since that was going to be gone quickly, I hurried to pop in some of the more extreme lights and darks that were created, as well as that funky orange of the water. 

STEP 4: Working up the canvas, adding some of the lighter areas on the rocks and reflections and clarifying shapes. Because I was working so quickly, I had many "happy accidents," as Bob Ross would say. They usually turn out to be my favorite bits of a piece, perhaps because I think of them as the result of something coming through me, as opposed to me trying to make something. That just seems so mysterious and magical.  

STEP 5: Adding some green moss and little plants, and delineating the water from the rocks with reflections on and around the edges of the water. And I removed the unhappy accident, which is hard to see from the image quality here, but was a bright dot of vibrant green in the water right below the funky orange sunlit area. Why did I think that needed to go there...?

STEP 6: Adding the final details, like the violet leaves (leaves of a violet plant, not purple leaves, although that would've been fun) and little dots and dabs that give the illusion of all the small pebbles from far away. I also had to figure out what was going on at the very top and sort of made up some smaller rocks in that little crevasse.

Et voila! All packed up and ready to go. The very top part is still not as resolved as I'd like it to be, but I don't want to mess with it lest I ruin it. 

Another shout out to Prolific Painter for the awesome kit, which is all in that backpack behind the painting: tripod, palette, canvas holder — everything! I will always love my homemade pochade box, but I have been seduced by the Ferrari of easels ...

Was this helpful or interesting? It helped me to have to think how to describe my process. I hope you got something out if it too. If you made it this far, you deserve a cookie! Thanks for reading.