Use acrylics for this painting in order to keep the hard edges of the mountain. As you work, use a fine-mist spray bottle to spray the pigments with water every fifteen minutes or so to keep them from drying out on you.
Surface
linen glued to masonite board
Brushes
nos. 6, 8 and 10 brights (stiff from previous use with oils)
Open Acrylics
Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue, Dioxazine Purple, Permanent Deep Green, Transparent Red Oxide, Yellow Ochre
Other
fine-mist spray bottle, gel retarder, Liquitex super heavy gesso, neutral violet pastel pencil
Sketch the composition with a neutral violet pastel pencil. (This will go muddy and blend in with the paint later on.) Lay in the clouds with Yellow Ochre and a hint of Dioxazine Purple. Lay in the sky with Cobalt Blue and a bit of Yellow Ochre. Plan for the sky to be a lighter value than what the river will be, since water is always darker than sky. Position the sun on the left side so that the sky will be darker on one side than the other—this creates a gradient plane. The two sides of the mountain look identical, so offset the symmetry by placing more clouds to one side. Paint the clouds with Liquitex super heavy gesso— it performs more like oil paint and will give you a good heavy texture, and increase the drying time.
Use a blue-violet mixture for the mountain. (Keep in mind that acrylic paint dries a touch darker.) Variegate the hues slightly, adding more red in some areas and more blue in others. Do not simplify the ridges of the mountain or it will lose its character.
For the distant hills, get darker and warmer as you begin to move closer to the foreground. Add more red into your blue-violet mixture. To keep the hill edge on the left from competing with the mountain edge, scumble and feather in the paint along the area to soften the edge where the hill meets the sky. Block in the evergreen trees with a muted green. Think of them as one unit when massing in. Do not repeat the gaps between the boughs, rather, simplify by reducing the number of boughs.
Continue painting the trees, varying the hues between the closest and receding trees, adding in Burnt Sienna to the closer ones. Keep the distant trees cooler. Ideally, no tree should be the same width or height, and the gaps between them should differ as well. Use a yellow-green mixture for the mid-ground cotton wood trees. Negative paint in the rocks with light gray-brown.
Lay in the water with a blue-green mixture. (Never use straight blue for water—there is no way to harmonize it!) Make sure it’s darker and more gray than the sky color. Paint around the rocks, trying to get lighter as the water recedes. This helps keep it from looking flat. Keep your brushstrokes straight and horizontal. Lay in the foreground rocks, focusing on the abstract shape of them rather than trying to copy them exactly. Create a melodic line at the bottom of the rocks where they meet the water. Eliminate the fallen trunks from the reference photo.
Add highlights to the evergreens. Keep them darker than the mountain. Add some smaller trees in front and some taller trees in the back to avoid having them look like one big wall. Scumble the edges of the trees against the sky to break up the paint and create soft edges.
Add retarder to the water before you begin the reflections. They should be more subdued than what is on dry land. Keep all reflections about the same value. Negative paint around the rocks. Don’t paint any reflections farther back, just in the foreground. Use vertical strokes for the reflections on the right and horizontal strokes for reflections on the left so they don’t compete with each other.
Highlight the mountain with white and a warm gray mixture. Think of the highlights as abstract shapes. Don’t try to copy them directly from the photo. Use a mixture of white and a touch of yellow-orange for the snow caps. Make sure there is no confusion between what are clouds and what is snow. The cloud value should be darker. Lightly drybrush over the snow to break it up. Add blue shadows to the snow, but keep them slightly darker and more gray than the sky. Square off the rocks. Exaggerate the presence of brown in the trees to add interest.
The Teton
Open acrylics on linen glued to masonite board, 8" × 10" (20cm × 25cm)