About "Water Drop Marsh"

This one was done about a month ago, and you may have already seen it on our website. I'd like to take you a bit through the process of making it.

As I sat looking at the blank canvas, trying to roughly visualize what I could turn it into, an image of a mossy place with large boulders up front came into my mind. I then saw that it should be wet and misty. Next, I figured that I wanted the scene to be set against a far, massive forest.

As I started, I used grays and blues, as to create a wet effect. Then the farthest trees where added, using the same sky color, but tapped on at a vertical angel. As the forest neared I flavored the color more with greens and browns, also adding more paint to the brush. What came next is usually one of the most difficult parts of painting a landscape, for me at least.. deciding what is in front of the background. I chose it to be rocky, rolling hills.

As the painting progressed I found the idea of having water puddles in the foreground fitful. Afterwards, I added more bushy ground and big rocks... I wanted the rocks to be huge when I first started scraping them on, but found this would be harder than I thought; the reason being is that it would have taken too much paint to complete. I then finished the details (notice the small flowers and grassy spurts) and about called it quits- but realized it didn't seem as "wet" as I had first imagined. So I girded up enough bravery to stroke in a few rain drops. It worked fairly well, and I learned a few new tricks, like turning the drops gray when against a white background (notice the ones in the sky portion).

Later came an idea to add a plant on the left side of the picture. This would have to be done when the painting was dry I knew, so that is why I didn't do it then. Here is what I found on the net that may work well.
Ok, I'm done.

- Joey