In the Silence



Normally Rita does the majority of her painting in her studio. However,
this painting was done 'plein air', i.e. on location as part of the 2004
Hidden Glenn Plein Air Show. It was painted by the waterfalls on Cedar
Creek Parkway (which is located off Highway 10 in Olathe, Kansas).

Here's the scene Rita has decided to paint. There is a bush with
red berries to the left. And a pretty waterfall to the right.


Here you can see how Rita set-up to paint the previous scene.
The waterfall was a little noisy!


Rita is sketching the scene.


Here's a close-up of the sketch. Please note the photo and the previous
sketch.


Rita is begining to mix her colors.


Here's a close-up of the palatte.


Here's the first pic of the painting. Rita sketched the scene
on the paper and then added resist to the areas she wanted to
protect. Then she began adding the background layers.


At this stage, Rita has finished the background layers. This gives
her the necessary colors to begin building the reflections in the
waterfall pool.


The first layers of color have been applied to the water. But it still
needs additional color and texture to show movement. The grass and
rocks are still not complete.


Here's the finished piece.


Epilogue 9/24/05:

During the past 6 weeks, Rita had this piece hanging in her studio.
As she worked on other pieces, something about In the Silence still
bothered her. The more she evaluated it, the more she became convinced
that it needed to be cropped. So she disassembled the frame and pulled
the piece out of the mat and cropped three inches from the bottom. She
also enhanced some of the color in a few areas and then resigned it.

Here's the final image:



Also, as a footnote, we've become a little more savvy about color
correction for images on the web. So this final pic is much much
closer to the actual image. However, as with everything on the web,
the actual pieces are much more vibrant that what the web can produce.