Rocky Mountain Path, 16″ x 12″, UART 320
I’ve been painting 12 x 16 size paintings in the last few weeks and find it’s a nice size for doing some cloud and water work. This painting was done as a “paint along” for a student who I work with in my studio. The photo is from our June 2019 trip to Estes Park for the wedding of my nephew. Seems like a loooong time ago!
In the photo the central tree is much larger and obscures some of the mountains. I decided I wanted them to be more prominent so I lowered the tree into a bush and made a little more of the path, leading it around behind the bush. You can see from the underpainting that I used some pretty bright colors. I’ve been favoring green under blue in my skies lately and it worked nicely. The red under the green also worked well. I made a number of changes to the composition after the underpainting. But that is the nature of a painting like this and it makes them fun to do. You can add various colors and shapes or change what’s there.
The sky was the first challenge with bright blues and lots of puffy clouds. In the photo the mountains are surrounded by clouds, but I wanted to have blue sky to set off the snow ridges. I used my Blue Earth blue and cerulean sets for the clouds, using a number of their grayed colors. Having been focused on clouds lately, I realize how important it is to have SOFT pastels to do them. Blue Earth, Great American, Schmincke are all really great for these. They go on like butter and make it SO much fun to do. Just remember to use a light touch!
Having done this painting in stages, while my student worked on his, I was rather anxious today to get it done. I really enjoyed putting in the path and the various rocks, bushes and colors of greens in the landscape. I particularly liked a light grayed green that I stuck behind the bush. I thought it might look like a band of flowers. I did add some small pieces of orange to denote flowers in the foreground but they aren’t really obvious.
This painting was fun to do and having a path like this with a beautiful backdrop made it all the easier.