Tag: landscape

Tecopa Hot Springs

I’ve been too focused on too many things rather intensely and it makes me unsociable and not interested in the small and seemingly unimportant stuff that makes up daily living. One of these focal points has been painting. I have been working on this oil painting off and on for several weeks, and think it is finally done to my liking.

Tecopa Hot Springs is located in the Mojave Desert in Inyo County, California. It is not a very populated area. The hot springs are odorless, mineral springs considered to have healing properties. In my area the hot springs are quite sulfurous and smell like rotten eggs, so odorless is nice! The view from the springs is spectacular, taking in the land and the mountains beyond. This is a bit of the grandeur that is California.

I took a bit of a colorist approach to this painting, a bit of imagination and improvisation as well. Realism is for photography, so here I could play around while working to capture a sense of the place. I like semi-abstract or colorist paintings which keep the subject recognizable.

Oil on canvas panel, 16×20.

Deep in the Canyon

Utah is home to many amazing national parks. These include Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands, Arches, and Capitol Reef. All of these are located in southern Utah and feature many different geological formation. In addition to the deep red canyons, there are ginormous hoodoos and sandstone arches. Rivers and streams run through the canyons, sometimes dry, sometimes filled with raging torrents, other times calm and serene. Flash floods are something to beware as they can come out of nowhere – storms elsewhere can cause floods miles away.

Here, an imaginary canyon in the autumn, complete with red sandstone and cottonwoods and evergreens. Colors are strongly contrasted when the sun slants into the canyon, bright and dark.

Getting the colors and the contrast “just so” is really challenging. I am playing around here with applying thin washes to tint large areas of the paper and then moving to more highly pigmented paint for deeper and brighter colors. I don’t normally paint like this, and it really makes me think a bit. More practice with this technique is necessary to find that fine balance.

Anyway, Arches 10×14 rough 140# paper; watercolor.

A Way to the Sea

There are just times when life is too busy or not busy enough. Either way, a deliberate decision to just goof off and let life happen helps me out. So, nothing planned but following my mood. My mood usually requires some kind of art work, and this weekend’s was a bit of gouache. I spied my gouache pan in the refrigerator where I keep it stored to reduce mold growth. Pulling it out, just a bit on my red, rinse it out in the sink, and find some paper and subject matter.

It’s been quite some time since I did gouache, but every time I do it is always a pleasurable experience. It’s opaque like oils, and paints anywhere from dilute like watercolor to opaque. Using artist’s gouache lets me re-wet it and fix things as I go along.

As always, when I am feeling rusty with painting in any medium, I fall back on a landscape. Of late, I have been looking at the works of Wesson and Seago, two British painters who specialized in the eastern bits of England, focusing on marshes and landscapes which are probably long gone now. The landscape is often flat with rivers used for boats. High and low tides run through these areas and the paintings and photos I have seen have boats in the water or tilted on their sides, waiting for the tide to return.

So, based on a lot of paintings and photos, here we are: “A Way to the Sea” – a bit of a pun on “Away to the Sea” – you choose!

Gouache, Bristol paper, about 8×10.

Desert Spring

I have been painting too much in oils – slow process, very satisfying, but it doesn’t come close to watercolors. I needed to take a break from it and return to my first love . . .

We have had a few good rains this year, and that can mean the desert blooms! The plain beige becomes green and flowers blossom. Sparse, harsh landscapes become far more gentle and welcoming. Death Valley was filled with life this year.

Watercolors, 10×14 Arches 140# rough paper.