Woods Lake, Sierra Nevada Mountains

This painting is another in a series of scenes from my backpacking trips over the years. My goal is to be able to paint the Sierras like Dale Laitinen who is a master at capturing the remote beauty of these mountains. The depiction of the lake is from a photograph I took but the background mountains are from my imagination and are perhaps a bit too stylized. The painting is done on a full sheet.

Aftermath

This experimental painting is semi-abstract with only the tree shapes and colors suggesting the reminants of a forest fire. It was done in two steps. First, the underpainting of wet into wet was let dry. Then, The blue foreground was added as were the drips depicting burnt trees. A couple drops of red acrylic ink suggested continuing hot spots. 

The Race

The second of my experimental paintings, it actually resulted from a failed attempt to apply the same technique as in "Wild Horse". After applying the paint with the plexiglass, I mixed the result on the paper to get the dark sky, added an ultamarine blue for the sea and when partially dry, scraped out the sail boats and waves with a credit card. 

Wild Horse

This painting is one of three I did for Tom Fong's class in which we were to try experimental approaches to painting. In this one I painted the background wet into wet then created texture by applying a roll of toilet tissue. I let it partially dry, and then pressed on to it a piece of plexiglass on which I had loosely painted the shape of a horse. I then used a two-inch brush to define the edges and features of the horse.