Ebner's Coulee

Ebner's Coulee, oil on panel, 6 1/2" x15", 2010  copyright Peter J. Bougie

   I painted Ebner’s Coulee from a spur of Grandad’s Bluff in LaCrosse, WI. It was a mild, windy spring day in late April, 2010. I stood at the edge of a precipice of 40 or 50 feet and had to mind my footwork. It looks south across Ebner Coulee on the east side of LaCrosse, down the Mississippi River. The bluff line on the far side of the river is southeastern Minnesota and, furthest down, northeastern Iowa.

   There is always some difficulty with windy conditions. In this location, the ground was rocky and so I was unable to stake out an umbrella. Since I was facing south, glare from the sun striking my shirt bounced back onto the painting. You would think that dark shirts would produce less glare than light shirts, but I haven’t noticed a big difference. Beware of brightly colored shirts, which will bounce their tints back onto your work on bright days. At times, I had to hold onto to the easel with my left hand while painting with my right. Even so, there is some movement because it is hard to continuously make judgments about whatever resistance needs to be exerted to oppose the gusts. And when that happens, sometimes the panel moves away from or towards your brush just as you are about to place it on the painting, and so the stroke doesn’t go where you want it to go, and has to be done over. Then again, on occasion, happenstance makes a better stroke than you hoped to make – just don’t count on it.

   The main point of interest was the view of the distance through the saddle shape made by the adjoining bluffs. The particular problem was representing the spring foliage, only partly opened up, and allowing a view of the ground under the trees, covered with fallen leaves and speckled with light and shadow. To mimic that mottled effect – an effect that was varied in particulars but in its entirety maintained a middle dark harmony - I worked out a number of color values (color and value/tone – light and dark considered at once), tried them on the painting, mixed the successful combinations on my palette, and then spotted them onto the painting, trying to leave the strokes alone. It was tricky and sometimes tedious work.

   This painting affords something of a contrast to Queen Anne’s Lace in terms of the overall range of value contrast, scale as related to the size of the painting, and the range and intensity of color. It is a one day painting and the size is 6 ½” by 15”. I did not use the chromatic palette, but the one noted here.