La Sal

Seeing as I'm enjoying the Desert South West and Arches National Park in particular this is another contre-jour of a nearby location to the last one, La Sal Viewpoint. I wanted to do a picture with some more distance in it with less emphasis on the butte and more on the sky to which end I decided to use transparent colours so that they look a bit more insubstantial (I feel earlier clouds in paintings have looked too heavy for something that is meant to be floating). I wanted a more translucent look to the sky so instead of just painting it in one colour it is in fact three glazes of thin transparent colour over the white of the canvas, first the Burnt Sienna/Winsor Violet mix, then a subdued lemon yellow layer and finally a glaze of a very subdued green/blue. The thin strip of orange/pink was always an integral part of the composition which incidentally very much follows the Rule Of Thirds with the placement of horizon and butte. The picture is based around a green/blue - red/orange complementary although quite subdued apart from the line of colour on the horizon.
Oil on linen 30" x 20".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting including what colours were used in previous posts on this blog.