California mountain and desert-scape

“Painting the desert and mountains
James George

Arlington Art Examiner

After having painted a large number of trees in Virginia last year, I embarked on a new venture to paint the landscape in desert California. I anticipated a change in pallet, though did not realize what a challenge this could be.

As a watercolorist, I am accustomed to the need to sometimes embolden the paper with more color. Painting en plein air, the natural light may distort the impression by either washing out color or otherwise making it difficult to achieve one’s intentions.

After having produced a few washouts, I visited the Palm Springs Art Museum where there are displays of desert paintings.

One of my first reactions was, “Hey, there are the purple mountains as in ‘purple mountains majesty.’” The plains are lacking fruit however here in the desert aside from the citrus trees in Palm Springs along the lushly watered fairways.

There is the natural western landscape and then the most unnatural.

Just as in painting trees or anything else in the natural open, the Earth moves constantly and therefore the light changes as do the shadows and the colors.

The purple mountains may generally appear to be pink or purple, though may just as well be shades of orange and yellow, brown and tan.

In my experience, there are vast variations in color in the landscape even with the momentary illusion of holding still. The landscape isn’t uniform though an integrated picture may aggregate to a feeling of a constrained pallet.

So, after having practiced, I am going to produce five paintings this week of high quality that attempt to depict the various colors of the California mountain and desert scape with the goal to discover somethings different as I did with trees.

I am posting some study examples and sketches so you see my starting position.
Reference to the current show at the Palm Springs Art Museum: http://www.psmuseum.org/...t_exhibition.php?id=48

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