Plein Air in Arizona

There's a trick to painting the desert en plein air and I haven't totally figured it out yet. It involves condensing multiples subjects --like shrubs and cactus and rocks-- into solid shapes. Matt Smith does it extremely well, but this Ohio painter always runs into a few difficulties.

Still, this year's efforts were better than many of my others. My friend and I painted in a conservation area near the Sonoran Desert and the fresh dry air was welcome, especially when I knew that fiends and family back in Ohio were experiencing record quantities of rain.

I think I did a passable job on the saguaros. They are challenging. What I really love about this area are the misty purple mountains. Whenever possible I set up my easel so I am facing then so I can include them in my painting.

9" x 12" oil on linen

Desert Views

The desert is not as pretty in the winter as it is in the spring but it's still a novelty for this northern girl from the flat lands of Ohio. I only had to climb a few hundred feet up the hill behind my friends condo and I was presented with an awesome view of cactus, hills and mountains. It's just a matter of picking out which specimen you want to be the 'star' of your show. With so many different and varied shapes to choose form this can be a difficult task.

I did this 6" x 8" painting in about an hour just before sunset.

Desert Vista

The Chief's Daughter

I managed to finally finish this piece over the weekend. I am not sure if I have enough detail in the jewelry yet. On one hand I think the jewelry adds a lot to these almost monochromatic paintings that are created from black and white photos and my imagination. On the other hand, the focus should be on the girl's face and the photo is too fuzzy to really make out what is going on with the jewelry. I love Curtis' photography. Somehow he was able to make the lens capture his subject in almost the same way the human eye does. We can only truly focus on one thing at a time, making everything else around that center of vision just a bit out of focus. I tend to paint with this in mind too, so a lot of my paintings are impressionistic around the edges and sharpen into a bit of detail where I want it to.

The background was taken from a photograph I took in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona last year. The pink clouds were amazing and of course that light really helped me make decisions about what color I needed to have mixed with her skin tones.

I like her as she is but I'll hang her in a frame on the wall of my studio and wait awhile to see if anything jumps out at me.