Painting sunlight

"Falling Water" 18x24 Oil

Every season our family spends time in New Hampshire. As a child it was summers at the lake with friends and skiing on vacations and weekends. In 1978, I bought a timeshare and we now go up in the fall and spring as well. Activities have expanded over the years with painting becoming a favorite. Hiking the woods and White Mountains I have encountered so many new painting spots that I couldn't possibly paint them all. The one thing that always captures my attention is the light. It changes the landscape by the minute as it filters in in the morning, dances through the trees and across the snow, hills and water during the day,  creates dramatic skies at dusk and a calming darkness at night. Consistent in the woodland streams are rocky paths cut through the land by rushing water, downed branches that gather along the edges and transparent pools that reveal the bed of the streams concealed elsewhere by white foam and deep dark pools of water.
What attracted me here was the serpentine curve of the stream that created rhythmic patterns of light and dark. The reddish tone of the rocks, pine needles and reflected light compliments the greens of the lush woods. The birches are quintessential NH. This painting represents the feeling I get when walking through the wooded landscape of NH.

I began with an underpainting of transparent red oxide to establish values and  composition. I wanted  to give a warmth that could show through in the final painting. I used underpainting white to establish the flow of the water. After that dried, I blocked in large areas using local color establishing some dark transparent layers first. The painting was built up with a number of layers finding areas to suggest rock forms under the rushing water and illuminating other areas with bright light to bring the viewers eye through the woods and down the stream.