Butte

This follows on from the previous "Shadowland" in that all the landscape is in shadow except this time low afternoon sunlight is hitting the distant butte. I wanted the colours to be a lot warmer than the last one and I also wanted to introduce some subtle colour changes into the foreground landscape. The original idea was to have all the land in shadow painted with glazes of transparent colour and the butte was going to have the sunlit areas painted in opaque colour but as the painting progressed it became apparent that I needed to keep all the paint transparent as the opaque colour would bring the butte further forward and ruin the sense of distance. The transparent colours used were Burnt Sienna, Transparent Oxide Red, Transparent Oxide Yellow, Winsor Violet, Ultramarine Violet and Permanent Orange.
I am enjoying painting near-desert landscapes at the moment (I think they particularly suit the transparent painted land in shadow) with this one being located in Arizona. I may well do another one somewhere around here before moving on. Once I have enough of these "The Big Sky" paintings I will start to approach some US galleries and see if I can place them for sale in the USA.
30" x 20" oil on linen.
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.