Here, fishy, fishy, fishy!

When I was down in Cassville a few weeks ago I drove around town (and the outskirts - the WAY outskirts), taking pictures that I thought would make good paintings.  I took some really gorgeous shots down at Roaring River State Park.  I've been down there I don't know how many times, but it wasn't until the last few years that I really saw how beautiful it really was.  It's especially pretty in the fall, so I knew I'd get some great shots. 

We went this time down to the trout hatchery.  All of these years I've been going down there, and I'd never seen them transferring the growing trout into the next bigger pool.   It was really cool to see all these little fishies flying through those tubes!

What I really wanted to get a picture of, though, was the cave that houses the Roaring River Spring, from which over 20 million gallons of water flows everyday!  I've always thought that the cave was really cool, especially the color of the water.  It's just this gorgeous deep blue, which is what I tried to mix up for today's stroke. By the way, if you can't see it, I was trying to insert a little pointy finger, but I don't know how to do that yet, so I'll just tell you it's not a very big stroke, and it's toward the bottom middle, right above the big horizontal green area. 

P.S. - Last night in class, also, I did a little 5"X7" preliminary drawing of part of a larger painting I'm going to do soon, also of the spring and surrouding cave and cliff, so I could get a feel for what colors I wanted to use and how to compose the painting to give it the depth it needs.  Here's a pic of that pic: