From a photo of a mountain stream in late winter. This is very much a sketch focusing on how to render contrasting textures of vegetation, rock that is both wet and dry, and water from smooth and dark to white and foamy.
I was very conscious of NOT overworking and stopped the moment I found myself getting fiddly with this. I'm pleased for not ruining the white water with too much fussing---it was very frothy indeed, and the only thing I would add now would be a few touches of very light yellow to describe the direction of flow. However, the water under the bank and rocks should be darker and warmer, to reflect the rock and bank colours respectively---I obviously reached for the instinctive "blue" even though this was an overcast, albeit bright, day with not a scrap of blue sky in sight.
It's clear in the photo that the background is quite a bit warmer than the middle- or foreground, and the foreground rocks are looking rather amorphous and less than solid to me now. They would need more careful description and significant warming up if I were to go back into this sketch. Which I am not going to do!
Palette: ultramarine, burnt sienna, burnt umber, cad yellow, a bit of sap green. Although I love this palette for its soft natural mixes, for my next project I'm getting out of my comfort zone with colour.
