Rain In The Canyon - stage 6

 Tweaked the rain and put a bit of warm light on the face of the canyon wall at right before making a start on the foreground.... and then realised that there was too much uninteresting rock in the foreground so I decided to cut into them with some more bushes which has broken them up and made them not so dominant in the composition. Much happier with it now and will finish the foreground tomorrow....

I am painting this as my application piece for an upcoming show by the International Guild Of Realism at a gallery in Santa Fe in July hence it is a bit more photographic than my usual work as the accent on the show is definitely "realism".

Rain In The Canyon - stage 5

 Worked on the canyon wall at right and faffed around with the rain again. It looks a bit too dark and contrasty here but will adjust tomorrow before starting on the foreground tomorrow.

Rain In The Canyon - stage 4

 Pretty much finished the sky and canyon and making a start on the nearer canyon wall at right tomorrow. I have gave it a blue wash (not shown here) and then stopped as I need to decide on what colours I am going to use here...

Rain In The Canyon - stage 3

 Pretty much finished the sky bar finishing the rain at left that can't be done until the canyon is finished. Have made a start on the canyon today and hope to get the background finished tomorrow including the rain although I'm tempted to have some of the rain falling over the dark canyon wall at right...

New colour used: Warm Light Yellow

Rain In The Canyon - stage 2

 First colour pass on the sky, the idea behind the painting is the screen of grey rain coming in from the right starting to cover the relatively complex shapes of the clouds and the canyon (I start on the canyon tomorrow). It's not as contrasty as it appears on this post...

Colours used so far:  Phthalocyanine Blue, Manganese Blue Hue, Dioxazine Purple, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon and Warm White.

Rain In The Canyon - stage 1

 This is probably the first painting to directly come out of last year's tour round the National Parks in SW USA and is of a memorable time when about 4.00 in the afternoon a rainstorm came down the Grand Canyon towards us and we had to dash for shelter. Apparently at that time of year it pretty much happened every afternoon  (July). All those shots I took of the landscapes I saw didn't really fit the theme of the "Home Land" series as they were too specific to quite famous locations so very little was used of those photos... until now.

I'm painting it as my entry for the annual show organised by the International Guild Of Realism with the exhibition in a gallery in Santa Fe later this year. If it doesn't get in I will put it up for sale on Artfinder, got to hurry up though it's nearing the deadline....

This is the tonal underpainting stage using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and a couple of brushes.

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

The Snow Palace

 Fancied doing a blue nocturne harking back to my love of blue Edmund Dulacs of which I saw a roomful at the Dulwich Picture Gallery many moons ago. I wasn't going to originally but I changed my mind and put some lights in the windows to give me the complementary as well as to give a bit more variety of colour. Set in an imaginary Central Asia where this is just about possible I tried to make the architecture more like a palace and less like a mosque by leaving out the minarets for instance.

I have painted this for my upcoming February 23 slot on Every Day Original and will post on that site later today.

Oil on fine cotton 12" x 16"

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.