Page No...2
The sky must be left now because it is so easy to 'mess to much' and then it spoils the whole painting. I am going to add colour to all areas now except the sky. All I am doing now is increasing the strength of the tone and the colour that is already there by gently adding more colour to it. I resist the temptation to 'fiddle' with the mountain at this stage because it is not far away from what I want. I concentrate instead on the rough grassy area in the foreground. The thing to think about here is the tonal value of the whole scene, if you were to squint your eyes a little you would be aware that the darkest parts of the view will be in the immediate foreground, as you look further into the distance you will see it gets lighter, that is the tone value, the progression from dark to light. It is important for us to remember that or the finished painting will look 'wrong'. It is these obvious points that we sometimes forget. OK I begin to put a little shape and movement into the stream. I am now working almost dry on dry, this is to stop me producing a 'muddy' mix of colour. What I can do now is drop a little water on to the rocks and as it settles I drop a weak mix of Light Red and French Ultramarine, very gently because it only needs a tiny amount. As this is almost dry I add some stronger colour to the extreme edges of them. Again now we need to let everything dry so I might as well put the kettle on!.
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