Plein-air with a Friend in Dayton , Nev

This is a recent plein-air done along the river near Dayton, Nevada just a few days ago.  I and a good friend who also loves plein-air painting, Carole, went out one morning to see what we could capture.  It was a wonderful morning, warm, bright, and very interesting light.  We walked only a short distance and came to the bank of the West Carson River, with was flowing lazily along since it is now September.  We had a lot of good water this year, a first in many years and boy do we appreciate that!  All I saw was so interesting a beautiful, the shadows on the very big sandy dessert-y mountains were wonderful, and the huge cottonwood trees along the river were so big, cool, and had very interesting shapes.   I began my first painting just to get a feel of the place, and get my mind to settle and look!  That is so hard when you are in a new place, everything just yells at you for attention!   I finally in the late a. m., early afternoon, painted this one.   I was looking across the river to the opposite banks to these trees and the distant mt.  The colors were gentle but beautiful, with some shadow left.   I used a surface I made myself on watercolor paper.  And I did a sketch, then a value drawing right on my surface and used water soluble pencil, washed with water for the values.  Then watercolor, then pastel-----sounds like it was very laborious, but it was not and went rather fast.  I wanted to catch the color of the light of the day----   It was fun, and can't wait to go again.