Rollin Down The River

This is the Steamboat Sough Bridge off the Sacramento River. The view is from the slough looking east to the Sacramento River just beyond the bridge. It is an acrylic on canvas (16"X20") painted from a photo taken from the boat of the couple that commissioned me to paint the scene. I posted another view of this bridge in Nov. '07 (also in acrylic but a lot larger- 48"X60"). Like a great deal of my work from reference photos, I ignore a a lot of the colors I see in the photo, and make up my own. Often times, this is not too efficient, because I feel my way around the color wheel to get what I want. I will play and play and play, but it's a great way to find new avenues of painting without scrapping or waiting days for paint to dry. The subtle colors in the sky and slough were definitely not in the photo, and even the tree colors got monkeyed around with. The cool thing is that with acrylic (I've said this numerous times in my blog) is that I can play with colors, values, etc within very short time periods. After all, acrylic dries within minutes. Not cool for oil painters, but I aint no oil painter (some of my best friends are oil painters...and...different strokes for different folks). Because of this easy ability to play, I'm of the opinion that acrylic can be a great medium to learn how to paint even though the student may end up being an "oiler".