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Not finished yet, but I have now logged a lot of hours on this piece. The landscape has taken me longer than I expected and still has a ways to go. The rock is a combination palette knife, on the left and brush work, all over. I struggled with whether or not to put her reflection in, I decided it was too distracting and changed my intent for the painting, besides she would not have one anyway unless she leaned way in over the water.

I am happy, I will have a lot more stream and even room for a few small waterfalls. I had fun deciding about the reflection. An interesting thing about reflections in water, they are not perfect mirror images of what we see when looking out at the landscape. We artists have to imagine we are water beetles looking up from the surface of the water, not from the vantage point of the viewer of the painting. What this means to us in the most practical terms, is that things that are in front of other things in the distance are less level with one another and appear more prominent. This will make more since when I finally get some paint on the canvas. One thin that does remain the same is the vertical positioning. Each reflected rock and mountain peak must be directly below the real thing even if the rendered shape is slightly different.

I happened to have a 20 x 30 canvas, which turned out to be perfect! I just finished the drawing tonight, I hope to start the under painting tomorrow.

Here I have started laying in the under painting in oil, I usually do this stage in acrylic to avoid the fumes. I got disenchanted with the composition, it felt cramped and yet not "narrow" enough. You can see scratched I made with my fingernail for compositional changes. I decided I wanted more room at the bottom so she could gaze at a reflection. I decided the best thing to do was to just start over with a different canvas. Perhaps I will transform this one at a later date.

Thank you so much to the person in Petaluma CA who ordered a print from me!!!! I almost fainted. I have had an online presence for years, but that was my first online sale.
I mentioned in the comment section of the painting that sold, "Beauty" that I had been sketching a new piece earlier in the day with that same woman (da da da da). For my first blog (ever) I will start by chronicling my progress with this piece.

This was my first sketch for my new painting with the same lady in the painting "Beauty". As you can see, I had trouble finding a foot position that I liked.