Krista and I spent the past five weeks in Mesa, Arizona (AKA Small Pond Southwest), on a working holiday: I brought 3 portraits to paint and she worked on some cool new puppet creations and wrote a short play. Having finished my portraits, I found I actually had time to paint this large landscape based on a photo from our trip to Lake Saguaro, which is amazingly just minutes from Mesa.
I mentioned in my previous post that the key to rendering drapery is keeping track of all the folds and wrinkles...well, keeping track of the folds and wrinkles in a mountainscape is even trickier --there were a few moments when I had no idea what I was looking at (is this jumble of rocks in Grid 5A or 5B?). There was some improvising with highlights. Colours were changed and/or enhanced. There was some deletion and relocation of some of the giant saguaro cacti. Plants became rocks and vice versa. But I think I did pretty well for my first Arizona landscape.
Here it is in progress.
I worked top-down on this to keep track of details.
Note the grid and the yellow underpainting.
This painting is now owned by the owners of the house we stayed in.
Once I've finished my 12-painting portrait series, Field to Canvas, I'll be planning my next series: I took tons of photos at the Grand Canyon that seem to want to be painted on very large canvases...
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