The Exit To San Breta

This is a private commission from a buyer that wanted a painting based around the short story by George R R Martin called "The Exit To San Breta" and is the nearest picture to illustration I have done for a good number of years. Like when I used to paint book jacket illustrations I have chosen to create a feeling of the setting of the story as opposed to any actual incident and was trying envisage a lonely gas station dwarfed by the vast Arizona landscape. It was important that I got a particular time of dusk for the sky, the story happens at night but I thought it would be spookier if I chose that time when the last of the daylight is in the sky, this makes the loneliness of the gas station more apparent and I didn't want it to be too dark either. The composition is based on the Rule Of Thirds with the positioning of the horizon, gas station and main sign all at third/two third intervals on the vertical and horizontal edges of the picture frame, and is based on a blue/orange complementary colour axis with some guest colours for variety.
I chose a panoramic format so that I had enough room on the horizontal plane to get across how in the story the road changes from potholed and overgrown to pristine condition when the Edsel car shown parked in the station forecourt comes into the story as a ghost that causes the narrator of the story to crash his car...except it never happens and the whole incident is an apparition.
Oil on canvas 39" x 16". There is a step-by-step progress through this painting on previous posts on this blog.