Tag: valley

Between the Mountains

One thing I love about California is the fact that the geography varies so much! Oceans with flat beaches, oceans with cliffs, mountains with snow and mountains with pine trees, and deserts stretching flat and hot, surrounded by mountains and creating a secret world fascinating and forbidding. Worldwide, deserts host animals and plants and insects which survive on little water, are stark and seemingly dead – but of such beauty. Deserts are not for everyone – familiar and comfortable landscapes full of trees and greenery are very different. It took me a long time to appreciate a more stark landscape than the rolling green hills and woods of the midwest and eastern seaboard.

This is a painting I have been working on in my weekly class, inspired by multiple memories and photos taken. I had a limited palette of white, ultramarine blue, Indian yellow, and light green. I tried to catch a golden glow as well as give a yellow-orange cast to the desert floor and hillsides – and create a softly blended painting.

Oil, 12 x 16 canvas panel.

Fog Monster #2

For some time I have considered the possibility of doing two studies for each painting, one in watercolor and the other in gouache.  Today’s painting is exactly that.  I took the same study in gouache (yesterday) and painted it in watercolor.  It was a really interesting experience!

First, I am doing all these studies in a 7×10 sketchbook.  The paper is not really good for really wet watercolors, but is very nice for gouache.  Knowing this, I kept my paper as unsaturated as possible, but also worked to use wet-in-wet where I thought necessary, such as in the sky and fog bank, but being very careful about the amount of water I used.  In other areas I did small, quick forays into wet work, but kept it to a minimum while allowing for bleeds, or coming back to work a bit more, such as on the right side where the grasses are in contrast to the road (lower right side).

Problems continue with depth.  The middle ground hills and the ones against the fog are muddled into each other.  While I made things simpler in the distance, the colors remain the same in intensity.  Atmospheric perspective needs a bit of boost in this one.

Look forward to more of these studies.