The River First

This small 9x12 painting I did while standing in the snow at the edge of the Green River last Sunday.  Ken Howard writes: "Corot ... advised that a painter should first establish the sky, because everything else in the picture then relates to the sky, the source of the light."   Of course, in this painting I painted the river first, then the trees, and finally the sky.  However, Ken Howard also writes in the same book: "It is wrong to make rules--on the whole, it is best [to] keep one's options open."