For years I have been giving paintings to my friends and family as gifts. This year for Christmas I wanted to gift paintings of places that they may have visited in their travels.
A few relatives love traveling in the Arizona, Colorado and Utah area. I thought that something with the red rock from the area would be great addition to their living room.
While searching for the perfect image for a painting, I came across an amazing image of The Double Arches in the Arches National Park. The bright, lightly clouded sky offset the red, orange, and burnt umber coloring of the rock at the park.
This was an opportunity to try my hand at the impressionistic style that Monet and Degas practiced.
Impressionism is a style of painting where the brush strokes are noticeable as the artist tries to capture the interaction of light with the space and subject of the painting. In this style it’s not about accuracy and the detail, it’s more about the build-up of the colors to make the composition.
Unlike the tradition impressionist style where you paint “en plein air” – in nature, I started the painting working from an image. Using this style it was easy to apply the paint to get a suggestion of light and shadow. I thought this technique would work best to suggest the detail in the rocks without actually being super detailed.