Landcape practice

Ok, I guess I've got to get out more! I'm painting landscapes from photos and the weather is starting to get nice, no excuses. Well, lots of excuses, no good reasons.

Arizona Weather, oil, long and narrow

Well, that was pure laziness, I didn't get up and go measure it. It's about that high, and longer horizontally.
Anyway, working from a photo in an old Arizona Highways. Remember those? When I was a kid I never saw the point, we were in Arizona all the time. When I close my eyes I can remember the smell of rain on the way. (I am rather please with the cacti.)

Winter, acrylic

Nope, now it's too purple. The trees look like little soldiers, but sometimes they do and you have to give them variety. Next.

Glen/Loch 8X10 oil

This has been in the works for several days. The right side will get more texture in the grass and make the ledges more irregular. Etc. It's a loch in Scotland, and it was just too beautiful to not paint it.

The Road to Helms Deep, 8X10 oil

Todays work.
This is from a photo taken either by Forrest or Sara. They both take great pictures and it wasn't labelled. They live in NZ now and they climb everything that goes up. They also take spectacular photos.
The spot in the middle ground was on my camera, not the picture. It's still all pretty near medium value and light value, the darker values will give it more punch. The little green bits in the foreground are actually full grown trees! The scale on this one is amazing.

Back to my roots

Well, some of my roots. I was raised as a rolling stone but an important part of my early life was in the American southwest. Sometimes I still feel like I'm still getting used to low round hills with grass and trees, and all these people out here in California!

Grand Canyon, winter sunset 8X10

There are so many aspects of the Canyon, times of day, seasons of the year, it's never the same. I wanted to paint COLOR. Sorry, didn't mean to shout. Too often I get caught up in accuracy of detail, so this time the rich red of the sandstone in the low angle light kept me on track. There were times I sure wished I'd picked a simpler shape, or at least simplified the shape of the central butte.

Navajo Shepherd family 8X10

This has less color, it's from an old photograph, and it's Monument Valley. My mom was from Arizona, and this is more as she would have remembered it. Her early memories were of a small mining town a long way from anywhere. In fact it took a long time to get nowhere, then you went from there to somewhere. When they moved to Miami, AZ it was like moving to the big city. Yes Virginia, there is  a Miami, AZ.
Back to the picture. Some of the sheep are quite brown, so they show up against the snow. It was a bigger flock, I took out my Artistic License and used it to pick and choose which sheep to include. Snow is an interesting challenge, and I need more practice, I've just never seen much of it. Lucky me?