Hot Fields and Farm Roads

Our group visited a very rural site with gravel roads and old barns. It was windy and very sunny. I did several value paintings of the barns and hills but couldn't put together a painting. When I got home I painted from my sketches and added some additional trees and trucks to fill in a rather bleak landscape. The barns were right on the crest of the hill and the land was just dried yellow grasses.

Work of El Nino

The hills along Hwy 80 are so green. I mixed lots of greens but they didn't look real compared to the vista in front of me. The sun was bright. I was high on a hill looking over the lagoon along the highway. The last time here the hills were golden. We were in the 5th year of a drought. Now, I'm complaining about mixing greens. I always end with my default sap green mixed with different yellows or reds. Sap green is the only green on my palette. I try using aurorean yellow with my blues or new gamboge with different blues or even burnt sienna or raw sienna. Some of these greens work but good old sap is my go to green. It really works well in the tropics.

The Vacaville Hills

Our Plein Air Group was out this morning in Vacaville. It was chilly at the start but the sun was brilliant and the clouds kept gathering. After a couple of hours it was clouded over with dark shadows and looked like rain (we would love rain here in California). Recent rain has kept these hills green and beautiful. Painting hills means lots of graded washes to create roundness and depth. There is also the 'problem' of greens. I mixed all of the greens using raw sienna and Ultramarine or gamboge and ultra and then burnt sienna and sage green for the darkest values at the bottom. It never really warmed to comfortable but painting was fun.