Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Carrizo Plain...again

"On The Carrizo Plain"

12" x 16" Oil on canvas covered panel

I decided to do yet another painting of the Carrizo Plain. I'm sure I will do many more in time so bear with me. This scene was painted simply because I love painting trails. I took a lot of photos out there where I saw trails leading off into the wilds. This particular one led to the foothills of the Elkhorn hills near the south entrance to the Plain.
The other thing that caught my eye was the immence distance there is across the Plain and the effects that causes on the atmosphere in the scene. There is an almost hazy effect on the distant mountains. I love how the details of these mountains were soflty blurred simply because of this hazy effect from nature. Very cool to see and paint. Below is a detail of the painting....

Here is the reference photo that I worked from. As you can see I cropped the area that I wanted and worked from that. This ref photo actually has many paintable scenes in it...you just have to spot them and grab your brushes.
See that cloud? Do you realize that cloud runs across the valley which means it was at least 5 miles long!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Another beauty Ron. They keep on coming. What a pleasure it would be to follow your trails and head for the hills that lie beyond. Have you analysed what it is about trails that interests you?

Ron Guthrie said...

Hi Mick,
I've never really thought too much about why I paint trails a lot. Some paintings just seem to ask for one so on they go. I suppose it is a reference to something man made in the landscape. I've read somewhere that it is good to include mans mark on the land. I don't want to overdo that because most of mans mark tends to ruin the landscape...but we are here so I suppose it's bound to show up in some of my landscapes.
Thanks for the comments Mick!