across the pasture in Dutch Valley
This was done this morning in pastel on small piece of Sansfix, dark blue. I had gotten a small tablet of this for just sketching and thinking. I have been thinking about something a friend had gone through while attending a clinic. That was the color of the mountains in a lot of the west that are covered with sage. As they go out in the distance its easy to pay attention the the atmospheric appearances of these hills and mt's and blue them out - - -but when they are not even 1/4 mile from you you tend to try for the colors that you see. We have had a lot of rain lately and there is a lot of color!! Trying not to get too hi-key, I wanted to play with these thoughts. I did the mt. first with a mouse grey (almost purple) shade, and then added a little local color over it. It made you think a lot - -sage can be so many different shades of sage-greenish purple, and when rained on can look lush. This range had burned off in 1985 and so most of the pinions are gone, leaving a lot of sagebrush to take over. I just st in my yard under a patio umbrella and day-dreamed the morning away! I have many more things to try - -like now do something like this with Oils, getting distance, and matching values to show the sun touched color. The sun was almost overhead in this one, just before noon. Still, the mt. had to be darker in value than the foreground or sky. More to come.
