"Mojave Evening"

12" X 24" Oil on Birch Panel

Another desert painting in late afternoon to evening light. I would thing the second one would have been easier, haha, but it wasn't. Seems like each painting presents it's own unique challenges. I'm always learning it seems with each painting. Makes you want to bang your head but it is actually a good thing.
Those foothills in the background are the beginning slopes of the San Gabriel mountain range looking south. On the otherside is the beautiful San Gabriel Valley. Back in th old West bandits like Vazquez use to hide out close to here and probably rode their horses into the foothills in this scene...ok, maybe they did.
....a detail of the painting,

    

High Desert Painting

"Song of the High Desert"

12" X 48" Oil on Birch Panel

This is pitiful because once again this painting came from my winter trip to the Little Rock area in the Mojave high desert...I have other desert reference photos but the pics I took that late afternoon are ones I really like. I headed out there to paint but got a late start and when I finally got there it was freezing. Instead of painting I decided to just take reference photos waiting for the sun to set down in the town of Little Rock at a McDonalds enjoying hot coffee...yeah, I'm getting soft in my old age, haha....hey, I'm going to be 55 tomorrow! Life speeds up!

The only bad thing about this painting is I'll have to make a frame out of oak for it because of it's odd size. Of course I like working with wood so no big deal....unless one of you framers out there wants to donate some killer frame for it....I'll wait up late tonight to hear from you, hahaha....that's going to be a long wait, haha.

A detail of the painting.....cool looking bushes. The desert has a great assortment of plants to contend with in...or to drive you crazy with depending on how you look at it.  

A closer look at three of the plants....actually, the larger prominent plants are easier to paint than all of the background plants in between these larger ones. Slowly I'm getting better at those "filler" plants in between the larger ones.

Desert Nocturne

High Desert Nocturne

16"x20" Oil on Canvas

I painted this nocturne of the high desert here in California about 4 years ago I think. At the time I was really painting a lot of nocturnes. I think desert nocturnes have a really cool look to them....reminds me of going to see a Remington show at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Griffith Park back in the mid 90's with my Dad. There were some Remington nocturnes there and it was really impressive to see them up close. Since then when I think of nocturnes I usually think of that show first. I've seen nocturnes by Charles Rollo Peters which were pretty awesome to see in person. He painted the mission here in town, Mission Santa Ynez....a beautiful nocturne scene.

This painting was really a daytime scene since I have no photos of the California high desert at night. I just used artist license and turned it into a nocturne. If I repainted this scene today there are totally some changes that I would make, softening the edges on everything for one. Night time makes all things have blurred soft edges and so that is one thing I'd change now. Another I think would be to have less detail in the plants of the foreground. They were there in the daytime scene but at night a lot of detail would get lost with the dark so I'd change that part too. Looks good in the frame here and I won't go back at this one to make any corrections. It's all up in the brain and will be used in new works.     

"High Desert Rabbitbrush"

24"x36" Oil on Canvas

I painted this scene about 2 years ago but something didn't feel right so I put it in storage. The other day I was hunting in the storage room and came across the painting again. Right away I spotted what it was that didn't look right to me. In the foreground rabbitbrush I had painted the values of the flowers and the plant itself too extreme. I went back at it and made my changes and now I like the painting much more....no more storage for this one.

I really enjoy the California high desert desert. The area in this scene is not far from the small desert town of Littlerock. The desert starts to raise up as it nears the foothills and just after winter the desert plants begin to bloom. Rabbitbrush is one of my favorite plants from the desert. In spring the plant is a grey blue color and in afternoon light looks just beautiful....of course, the entire area as barren as it is can be very beautiful. Obviously you don't want to be standing there in the dead of summer becuase it can get seriously hot. These plants thrive in the desert climate. I've learned that the Mojave yucca trees on average can be anywhere from 200-300 years old and the oldest creosote plants, near Lucerne valley, were carbon dated to 11,700 years old! They are some of the oldest living organisms on earth.        

California High Desert

"California High Desert"

24" X 36" Oil on Canvas

You know....I've kept from posting this image for about a week. The problem is I just cannot get a decent pic of the painting and it has been driving me crazy. I've used 2 different cameras and tried every setting I could think of. The painting looks pretty good here on the easel but some of the colors here in the photo are just reading a bit too intense. The yellows on the sage bush in the foreground have too much contrast in relation to the rest of the plant. On the easel the contrast of greens/yellows are more subdued and the greens of the sage brush are a bit better milky-green looking. I don't know if it is a Nikon thing or not...yellows come screaming through both of these cameras....and yes, I've tried all of my photoshop tricks to fix it all but I'm tired of messing with it so I'm just going to post what I felt was a bearable photo of the painting. Sometimes some paintings just don't do well in a photo but look fine in a real life setting....this is the king of those types, hahaha.