Rocks&river HELP by Carol Hitchman

This does appear to be a complicated scene Carol, I think the trees and the landscape work well. At first I thought the dark part of the river was the river bank, perhaps due to the texture. You could pretend that all the river was light. It's hard to advise without seeing the actual scene, the best idea would be to closely compare your photo with your painting.

The problem is twofold - one is that it's a bit difficult to see where the water ends and the land begins - we all tend to get this problem, I most certainly do, and the answer lies in using light washes of transparent colours: the muddier the colour, the more the water looks like mud. But there's another problem, and that's the direction of the reflections, which will generally be at right-angles to the object causing them, and not at an acute angle like this. In this case, they would lie flatter on the water, and not so sharply diagonal to the bottom of the paper. The angle is much too sharp. I should a) strengthen the colour/tone in the bank at left; more clearly define the bank at the right, so you can tell where the bank ends and the water starts; and correct the angles of the reflections. The shadow cast will depend on the direction of light hitting the objects; in this case, the light looks to be coming from one angle, the reflections from another.

Thank you so much Stephen & Robert. Stephen the "messy "texture of the dark part of the river is due to me messing about rather too much to try to get it right. Robert I really do appreciate your "lesson" on the correct way to achieve what I was trying to do. Although I've decided not to do any more to this painting, I've printed off your wise words for future reference. When you have no-one else to ask for advice this website is so helpful and when the real experts respond it really is so valuable. Thanks again to you both.

Someone once told me 'there is no such thing as an expert, as an 'x' is an unknown quantity and a 'spurt' is a drip under pressure'! It really comes done to much practice and trial and error.

Stephen -that is an absolute gem which I've not heard before -had me chuckling out loud. Thanks for that. Have started another painting today (with refelections) -depending on the result it may be on the site over the weekend.