Reflecting

I'm working on another video this week, thought I would share some snapshots from my progress. I make these videos for my free teaching website: www.PaintWithKarenIlari.com It's my attempt to encourage other painters, from very beginners, to paint! I post teaching videos, and we have forums where you can post your own paintings for helpful ideas from myself and others. I love the world wide scope of it. We have regular posters from Ireland, Australia, Newfoundland Canada and all over the states.
Videotaping brings its own challenges - and I'm learning as I go! Finding a camera angle that gets the painting, the palette, but not me! is a challenge. In this one I'm trying a new angle that I think is working pretty well. I also have to work fairly small for it to work. This painting is an 11"x14"

These are snapshots taken from the video:
Here is the block in stage:

It is a scene of a sunlit bank of the river, reflecting into the river, with shadowed foreground trees.

At this point I am done with the far bank of trees:

And now with the river and little islets in the river

 And starting the trees and foliage in the foreground - interesting how the lighting in the video changes as the light outside does, it got much cooler here. It was more overcast outside. I have south facing windows in my studio, not the best, but at least the sun doesn't shine straight in at any point.

And adding more foliage:

This is the point where I let it sit and then decide what to change.
1. I wish I hadn't put so much foliage in, I covered up too much of the background. I'm going to go back in and recover some of it.
2. The value of the foreground foliage is too close to the shaded Islets in the river. I think I will lighten them up a bit to get some distance.
3. There is a lot of the canvas texture showing in the foreground foliage, I don't have enough paint there. I like to build up some texture in the closest areas and it is all still pretty flat. More paint!

So, off to work on those things! And I thought I was done.... pshaw. :)

And here's the final product! The video is up in the August Classroom on my teaching website - here's the link: August Classroom. If you haven't signed up as a member, it will lead you through a simple sign up process. It's free, so no worries there!

"Reflecting" 11"x14" acrylic on canvas.