Use oils for this painting so the water foam can easily blend and create soft misty edges where the water meets the rocks.
Surface
stretched canvas or canvas board
Brushes
nos. 6, 8 and 10 brights
Oils
Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue, Indian Red, Underpainting White, Viridian, Winsor Violet, Yellow Ochre Pale
Other
neutral violet pastel pencil
Sketch in the drawing with a neutral violet pastel pencil. (This will blend with the paint later on.) Lay in the blue-green water using Cobalt Blue, Winsor Violet and Viridian. Show variances of each of these colors. Place the brush strokes in the same direction that the water would be running. Use thin paint so a second layer of paint can be added easily.
Premix Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue and a touch of Indian Red and white to a mid dark value. Don’t over mix. Just allow the colors to mingle to kill the intensity. The colors should remain marbled on your palette. Paint in the rocks using abstract shapes. Add touches of Cobalt Blue with white to indicate the sky reflections on the wet rocks.
Continue to indicate the rocks, but this time build, a larger rock and add Yellow Ochre Pale to it for variance so that left side has something different than the right side. Check that the water lines on both sides are quite different to avoid cloning. Add a few smaller rocks into the waterfall to give it a sense of belonging in the context of the scene.
Add more rocks into the waterfall, but this time make them semi-transparent to indicate that shallow water is running over them. Think of them as a bridal veil. Add the white water with a touch of Yellow Ochre Pale and white to the top third of the waterfall, only with thick paint. Keep it from mixing in with the darker blue. However, allow some the white to mix in with the blue foundation at the lower two thirds. You should be able to see two distinct values. Twirl your brush where the water meets the rocks until they form misty patterns.
The front evergreens are done with a mixture of Viridian, Winsor Violet, Burnt Sienna and white. They should also be a mid-dark value. Add a gray mist behind the evergreen trees.
Hidden Falls, Teton national Park
Oil on canvas, 8" × 10" (20cm × 25cm)
Finally, add two more rows of evergreens behind the front row. Use the same mixture but add more Cobalt Blue, Burnt Sienna (to gray down the color) and white. Get progressively cooler and lighter as the forest recedes. Add mist behind the first row to enhance the sense of depth. Your painting should end up with three levels in the background. Add some bare tree trunks as seen in the finished version.