As you might already know, I’m doing a series of paintings featuring the beautiful Kings river throughout the seasons. This page is for Kings river in summer. The reference photos I’m using for all four paintings are taken at the same location, different seasons and sometimes different times of the day. This one is a late-summer morning, with a sunbeam filtering through the right hand side. If I manage to get a photo of a kingfisher, I might put him in the foreground in a similar way I did the heron in the Autumn painting. But I’m undecided on that yet. The kingfisher may become a separate painting.
Progress
While it’s too late to buy this one, because it’s already (tentatively) sold, when I have paintings on the easel, they’re always offered at a discount. I never know which of my works are going to strike someone quickly, but the last two did and were sold before I finished them.
Happy Little Accidents
See that cute little waterfall? That was a happy accident. Let me tell you the story. I was painting on this while at the Bentonville Art Market on Aug. 12. I had the rigger in hand and turned to say something to my friend Allyssa who was visiting with me that day.
Then she said, ‘Oh, I like the waterfall!’ And I said, “I don’t have a waterfall…” and when I turned to see what she was talking about I saw that I had touched the canvas accidentally with the rigger when I wasn’t looking.
At first I was pretty upset, because it’s very difficult to impossible to remove that white once it’s on the canvas. But after looking at it, I decided that I liked it! I made a few little squiggles to make it work, and now it looks like it was meant to be there all along. Happy little accidents like this are welcome!
I may tone down the white in spots, but it’s going to stay. Rainwater runoff could have made it in real life, anyway 🙂
Inspiration
You can see from the photo above that it’s a very beautiful location. Here’s a short video I posted to YouTube if you’d like a different view.
While it’s on the easel
UPDATE: The painting has been spoken for.
See the other seasons
As I get the pages made for each season, I’ll link them here.
Kings River in summer is not so busy
Well, the landscape is just as busy. I meant traffic from floaters. We’re very near the headwaters, and very few people try to float at this point. Kings river is every bit as beautiful as the Buffalo National river, but it’s not developed for the public so much. There are no public put-in points until it crosses highway 412 in Marble. During summer, it is often too dry to float. The scenes I’m painting for this series are the view I see as I cross the bridge on our dirt road every time I go to the pavement.
Rural Life
We live six miles off of the nearest paved road. Kings river and Felkins creek are my roadside companions, one or the other of them, for that entire delightful, but SLOW, drive. At my ordinary travel on dirt road speed, it takes me 30 minutes to go from home to pavement. It can actually take much longer than that if I’m not in a hurry because I stop often to snap pictures or talk to the trees along the way.
The rocks I use for my paints are represented in our stretch of the waterway. Kings river in summer is a frequent destination when I am seeking a certain yellow stone. The water is low enough to wade across to the gravel bar I need to visit.
Here’s a post with a short video to show this source of my inspiration.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity reigns in this watershed. The deep cut hollers where water runs off to tributaries offer deep shade and rich soil for some of my favorite plants. We have beavers and otters, and while the fish are small, my children grew up with ample opportunity to catch a few fish from the deeper pools on our largest local tributary to this river. It’s deep enough for deer to swim in Kings river in summer to help them escape from the deer flies. Check out this video I took while one of my artist friends & workshop participant and I were out doing a bit of pigment foraging: