Imagination is prerequisite for direct observational painting. You have to be creative about mixing and applying paint. This is the thinking as applied to my willow painting lesson of July 2000.

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To study depth in this, my fifth painting, I started off with the sky and its reflection. The pale colour of the sky was "as it was" on the first day of painting. This taught me to (later on) exaggerate the colour of the sky in such instances.

Then (holding the board at arms length) I set-about attempting to outline the trees covering the far bank as well as their reflections. Where the background was obscured by the willow tree, I moved along the bank a bit.to paint it, so those areas still visible behind the main subject would fit the reflections.

Once the far bank and branches were roughly in place, to frame the next stage I painted in the near bank. It would have been a good idea to put in some bird life before carrying on to the next stage of the painting. This could have brought out some depth within the reflections.

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