DAWN IN THE DESERT

Staying with the Desert for the moment, this small study was completed soon after returning back to my studio. Since I was painting mostly from memory, I adjusted the colors of the sky and deeper tones of the landscape as I went along. One would think that you would only see clear blue skies in the region being so dry with a limited annual rainfall but actually there are even occasional storms and our visit was just after an unusual amount of rain had fallen. For the most part, the ground was carpeted with small desert flowers most of them in bloom. Clouds tended to form in the cooler mornings but were slowly burnt off by the mid-day sun later in the day. The slight glare in the upper left of the painting is a reflection from the wet paint. This oil is 9" X 12".