Shadowland

Following on from "Desert Daybreak" this one has most of the landscape in shadow but this time against a painted sky. This is another one trying an area of largely monochrome set against an area of colour, the monochrome seemingly best suited to areas in shadow. It didn't actually work out as I intended but it has qualities that I can take further, it looks more photographically real than I was expecting for instance which is surprising how quickly and roughly it was painted in. It's almost using  oil paint like watercolour, the crucial difference being the time one has to move the paint around after application, watercolour obviously drying far too quick to be able to do this. "The Big Sky" series of paintings started out with the apocalyptic urban scenes but has now moved on to the American Landscape with desert scenes being the current fascination!
Oil on linen 30" x 20",
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.