Keeler - stage 1

Following on from the last picture I decided to do another moonlit landscape this time in California, a small town called Keeler that I had seen in a TV documentary about William Mulholland, the controversial engineer that designed and built the water supply for Los Angeles from here in the Owens Valley in the early 1900s.
I like to choose in one way a very ordinary building or settlement and emphasise the often extraordinary landscape that it it is in with lighting and weather etc.  In this case the barren waterless landscape of the Owens Valley where there was once a lake that has now disappeared as Los Angeles grew and the demand for water increased.
This is the first tonal underpainting stage which I used a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and applied first with a small bristle brush for the "drawing" in and then with a rag once the 'drawing" had dried sufficiently.