River House, 20 x 16, Pastelbord

This second painting of Maine is from a trip in 2009. This was shot inland, somewhere near Rockland. I’m hoping to figure out where it was and perhaps use the name of the river in the title.  For this painting, I decided to use watercolor as an underpainting. It worked very nicely in the top part, not quite as well, but OK, at the bottom. I used violet and used varying degrees of color to lay in the layers of trees in fog. It was an overcast, misty day and I loved the quality of the light. For the sky, I began with light violet, then used the lemon yellow Art Spectrum tinted white pastel, which is one of the most useful I have!  I used a combination of violets and greens in the trees. I made up the boat and showed a lot more of the house than what was in the photo. I left out overhanging branches in the upper right corner, but kept in the lower branches, which I really liked.  I wanted this to have a sense of softness and mystery. Used some finger blending in the water.  I really enjoyed doing this painting and once again painting over watercolor on Pastelbord.