Down by the river

(C) 2018 Dale DiMauro

Brattleboro, Vermont, on Saturday was the site of a beautiful, sunny day. While I played in a singles tournament at the Brattleboro Outing Club, I found time to fit in some plein air painting.

In my travels around the area I often seek out new areas to consider for painting. The location for this picture is one of those locations. When you head out of Brattleboro towards the old Walmart store, you travel over two bridges carrying you over the Connecticut River. Just before the second bridge on the left is an old bridge abutment which appears to have been there for many decades. These days it is the perfect landing to look up and down the Connecticut River on the New Hampshire side.

Since I use a different palate for outdoor painting than my indoor set I come up with different results. My outdoor palette has sixteen pigments while indoors I may use as many as forty colors.

Lately I have been combining colors I would not have imagined before. I put red into my blue skies to attain some warmth while partnering browns with my greens to achieve a rich, earthy color. Yesterday, I like the effect my rigger brush made when I dragged it across the page. This can be seen in the sharp-edged foliage of the tree on the upper right. 

Each time I play with watercolor paints something is learned. Even when a watercolor does not come out like I would like, I make notes to refine my approach.