Gloomy sunset and the Fraser river

You may find this painting familiar, and you'd be right. I painted over this painting. I was not satisfied with how the old painting looked, very plain and lacked form. I also did not like how it didn't show the banks of the river so there's no visual clues of where I was standing and how wide/narrow the river was.

After trying out painting-into-effect, I thought this would be a great candidate to do it again. There was a rain front coming in to the lower mainland from the south. From my living room looking north I could see the cloud front covering most of Vancouver and stopped just short of the mountains on the North Shore. I wanted to do a sunset of this painting, but I wanted a brilliant sunset with nice clouds and clearing with lots of colours.

Anyway, Heather came home and I heard her say that the south near the river is all clear, so we hopped in the car and started driving south to the river. The whole way I saw nothing but clouds and I asked her where's the clearing she was talking about. Apparently we had a miscommunication. Looking north from the rear view mirror I could see the sun hitting the top of the mountains with nice warm colours, but my heart was set on painting the river.

We got to the river, and it looked pretty lackluster, but I could see a sliver of orange through the gray sky. I wanted to wait a bit for the sky to get darker and colours more saturated. I was happy to see the tide had gone down and revealed the bank on the right side with snow on top, nice textures!

The colours never got saturated as I had hoped, but I am starting to feel that the joy of painting and the reward is not the view you are presented with but how it's transferred to the canvas.

Gloomy sunset and the Fraser river - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

Looking at some of the best landscape paintings in art history, I wonder if we were there in front of the view would we be inspired?

Here is a painting by Isaac Levitan, one of my all time favorite painters. When I was at school my animation short was inspired by his paintings. 

Vladimirka, 1892 (79 x 123 cm, Oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery) - Isaac Levitan