Step1

I have washed blocks of colour in areas to take away the white gesso and start to give me some tones to work with, I have worked in the rotting leaves of the stream floor and started the reflections. I am painting in areas as this will make the painting easier and I can concentrate on a section at a time. Bite size pieces as we used to say when training people.

As the painting progresses you will see the shapes and colours drawing the viewer to the bend in the stream (but this will be only part of the finished subject)

I have completed some broad areas of the painting as I wanted to get the lighting and perspective right. i also was getting bored of painting the leaves. As you obviously can see there is no sky but the colours and patterns let you know where this is. I will one day complete a painting with no subject just reflections. I have a great photo when I lived in Scotland of a mountain side reflected in a lochan and no matter how much you look at it you can not tell which is the mountain and which is the reflection.

The perspective of this painting is going to be slightly different in the fact that the immediate foreground will be as you were looking directly down and then this will sweep away to the background, so in effect it is as through you are lifting your eyes rather than looking at the subject in one go.

At this stage I photograph the painting and convert it to black and white to check the tonal quality and to make any adjustments before proceeding.  As you can see the painting seems quite balanced with the 'S' leading the eye to the light by the fallen tree,

I have roughly sketched about 20 finches and a couple of Sparowhawks and scanned them into the computer. I find this works extremely well as I can change. delete rotate. and resize to my hearts content until I am satisfied on the compositions.

This is not the final selection or placement. I then draw in more detail and transfer the sketch to the painting once I am satisfied, even then there will be some changes.

I have now added more detail to the painting and it is ready to add the subjects.