Sweetwater Park Fog Lifting (framed}

I like the moodiness of this piece.  It's part of a series I'm working on based on sketches and location paintings from the Sweetwater Wetlands Park. It's done with oil and cold wax on an 11 x 14 canvas panel from  a sketch done on location. It looks nothing like the sketch but once I got started I couldn't stop. The painting process told me what to do. Paintings often take on a life of their own.  That is often said but what it means is letting go of the "plan" and going where the process takes you. I liked what was developing as I worked and since the original location sketch was intended to be a reminder, a jumping off place, I jumped off. In the process of working from the sketch done several weeks before on Christmas day, I re-imagined the lighting from a clear, bright, crisp day to make it a gray, foggy, cloudy day about to become a beautiful morning. I was looking at the atmosphere in the sketch which was showing more than what was actually there that day. The sketch was a loose watercolor on a gray toned paper. I liked the feeling and the vagueness of the sketch because in this instance, I was able to translate the sketch into a completely different feeling than what the actual weather was showing me. It makes working from location drawings more fun when the preliminary work sparks my imagination. Instead of trying to use photos to create a mood or copy the exact scene it's way more fun to make it up!. It also means I can stare at this same sketch again some time and come up with an entirely different picture.  This painting is sold