Swirling River (Oil Bar Painting Day 1)

Swirling River (Oil Bar Painting Day 1) Originally uploaded by randubnick

Here is another oil bar painting that I am working on. I started it three days ago, and this is how it looked after I had finished working on it that first day. Like the painting I posted yesterday, this is also a close-up view of the Merrimac River current, again based on photos I took up in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Although I thought I had already posted the photo that this painting is based on, apparently I didn't, so I will do that tomorrow.) Like the painting I posted yesterday, this looks like an abstraction, but is really based on observation of the swirling waters of the Merrimac river near the "weir" or small dam. I am working on these two paintings of the river current at the same time, to maintain similarities of scale and approach. But it also makes sense given the time pressure, because these are for a show in January, paintings of the the Merrimac River and the mills in Manchester, New Hampshire. On the day that I started this painting, I had a print-out of the photo for reference, and just blocked in some of the basic shapes and colors, and this is as far as I got. Even though the perspective needs adjusting in this view, by the end of the painting session, I began to get the feeling of the swirling river current, as my hands made repeated swirling in the paint to mimic the movement of the water. To be continued. . .