Preserving the Light

 This is really about negative space again. My initial washes are sloppy. I like soup and allowing the paint to do its own thing. Then I experience control issues… Developing lighter grasses against a darker, watery background contains several challenges especially if one wishes to include some sparkle in the water. Once the first layer of grass has dried I add strokes in different colours to encourage the illusion of grasses and reeds. I then take the colours of the darker water and carefully open spaces in the solid lighter areas to create thinner stems and seed heads. It is important to use the same value of the background and maintain the line of the stems. It does not have to look like the photo. It has to look like grass…. The glittering water requires a more horizontal approach reducing the white spaces sometimes to a few points, more often splitting the lighter area in two so there are two fine sparkles instead of one big glob. One has to be choosy. It is so easy to overwork this. Step back often and ask the question: is it working? If the answer is ‘yes’, leave it alone. Enjoy!