Green and More Green

Green on the Green

9 x 12 soft pastels on Art Spectrum Colourfix

Miki Willa

This is the Green River in Flaming Geyser State Park, Washington. I did this one using a complementary color underpainting. I should have taken WIP photos to show you some of the amusing problems I had with this painting. When I thought it was finished, I stepped back with Tom and discovered that the river looked as if it were going to slide diagonally off the page toward the bottom right corner. I hadn't paid enough attention to my water strokes. Then I noticed that I had created a perfect formal garden hedge of flowers all along the river bank. The path was all one value from front to back. I decided to wait until this morning to fix all of this. A few carefully placed strokes with my handy-dandy foam brush took out much of the hedge and helped to fix the river. I found my favorite purple for the nearest part of the path. Then I added the strokes in the river to make it show movement in the correct direction. We were there on a very cool early June day when the river was still running high, and I think I captured both the cool weather and the full river.

The title? It was a very lush green place along a river named Green.