Painting The Tennessee River Gorge

I spent the day at Prentice Cooper State Forest, near Chattanooga, cussing the light and painting on Snooper's Rock overlook. It was my first time there, after having seen some photos online of the place. I knew I needed to paint there...I was just hoping for interesting light after all the storms we had yesterday. But no, perfectly clear and sunny skies and given that I get a late start after getting my kids off to school and then the 1.5 hour drive to get there...it was pushing noon before I started putting paint down.

The first painting I did was on a 5"x14" linen panel and an attempt to capture the complete bend in the river and Elder Mountain across the way. As I knew it would be, the light was a challenge, but I'm fairly stoked with how it turned out.

"Bend Below Snooper's Rock"  5"x14" oil on linen panel

Here's a little video of the spot

With that one done, I broke for lunch and drove down to a nice joint called the River Drifters Bar & Grill on Suck Creek Road. Grabbed a burger, fries, and a beer and it was sure nice to sit outside in the shade and look at the wooded cliffs across the river and think of what I might do to kill some time to give the light a chance to maybe improve toward evening.

Prentice Cooper has quite a bit of 2 track Jeep trails (I know...I have a Jeep) and I explored some of them and got some mud on my tires before heading back to Snooper's Rock to try it again with late afternoon light. I wasn't going to be able to stick around to see what sunset looked like.

Now that the sun had swung around and was illuminating the cliffs on the side of the mountain facing me, I figured I could work with that. I also decided not to do a full view of the bend and just concentrated on the view up river and the other elements of the gorge. Oh, also...dang there's a lot of green and very little contrast. But, as the sun was dipping down further, I was able to work some shadows in and warm up the foreground greens. Oh, yeah, this one is a 12"x24" oil on linen panel.

"Tennessee River Gorge" 12"x24" oil on linen panel

Here's a little video of the spot...the voices are from some nice folks hanging out at the rock too.

That was enough for the day. Packed it in and made it home just before dark.

Let me know if you like this kind of content for my website and to share on social media...I'll keep it up.
Todd