This is one of those fantastic scenes where there are scenes within scenes. The sky and copse of trees in the distance make a wonderful painting on their own, as do the rocks, pool and roof.
I painted in the sky first, using cobalt blue mixed with cerulean blue. I worked wet on wet and used a tissue twist to lift off colour. I painted the trees next, yellow underpainting, and then used a variety of greens I mixed from my blues and yellow but added further colours to that mix to create lemon greens, purple greens, brown greens and dark greens. I used a stipple brush to make most of the brush strokes. This part of the painting took at least one hour to complete. I drew in the distant tree trunks with a B4 pencil.
I then painted in the body of water using a turquoise acrylic blue mixed with a watercolour viridian green. I used this light to dark and painted in the small land mass using a flesh tint with some yellow ochre added. When it was 100% dry I used titanium white to paint in the ripples on the water.
Next, I painted in the roof. I underpainted with flesh tint and yellow ochre. Whilst this was still damp, I used a stipple brush to add chromatic back, purples, greens, and left some of the underpainted areas uncovered. I painted in the stalactites with chromatic black over flesh tint.
I then painted in the rocks using a variety of colours and differing tones of those colours: pink, purple, pink and purple mixed, burnt umber and chromatic black for the dark shadow areas.
Finally, I painted in the waterfall, using neat titanium white painted with a rigger brush.
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