Finished Painting: Finally I've finished working on the water, and have added some legs to the bird! The pale area of water at the bottom of the painting is reflected sky and I had a lot of trouble making this look convincing. I had to add reflections of a few small, winter trees and the odd fence-post to help explain what was going on down there. In places, in the dark area of water, the sand just shows through as a speckled texture, where individual grains of sand are themselves reflecting bits of sky. This too posed problems and I spent a long time trying to get that looking right. All in all a bit of a nightmare, but hopefully it will look better when it's varnished.

I liked the the very flat light of this overcast winter's day as it helped accentuate the bold, almost abstract shapes of the boulders and the water, without a lot of shadows complicating the scene.