MORNING IN THE DESERT VII

A few years ago, I was invited on a trip to the desert regions of California and Arizona. This type of environment was new to me and I became fascinated with the changing landscape. I prefer heat to cold so the high temperatures didn't bother me in the least and I felt quite at home. I have many wonderful memories of my time there exploring the region and discovering the fauna and flora along the way. This trip has led to many paintings of the region and also to a few different works in a series. The 'Morning in the Desert' series is one that I am still working on today and I am sure will continue with for many more years. I have a lot of different paintings planned in both oil and watercolor, some very large, others only small studies. Living in America has opened me up to color in a way that I didn't think possible and now a lot of my paintings feature color that I wouldn't have dreamed of using years ago. The painting above was difficult to do in watercolor but I got a warm sense of completion then it was finished. Fortunately I had done a larger version similar to this one in oils so that painting became a kind of pre-study and this helped enormously. In the scene, I was concious of the way that the early morning light was raking across the scene creating a wonderful contrast of light and shadow and this is what I tried to capture in pure transparent watercolor. The size of the painting is 8" X 30".