Arches National Park watercolor and pastel

Large puddles of cerulean blue,  yellow ochre, rose madder are ready for the initial wash. 

I spritzed the paper (140# stretched) with lots of clean water then evened it out with a large brush covering all of my fairly detailed drawing.

Here are the first washes, I thought they were fairly strong, but as you will see later the sky could have used a lot more paint!




After the first washes were dry I masked out a few areas.

I begin laying in more color working from the distance to the foreground.

Here I wetted an area (the 3 gossips) with water then dropped in the colors and let them run together.  I am interested in having juicier paintings and this is a great way to loosen up in a controlled areas.

I have almost finished defining the major rock formations, notice how I left a soft edge on the lower right - this is so I can go into that area again later and the next wash will appear seamless.

Scumbling in passages of plant-like shapes in the foreground, trying for some diagonal lines with the greens and reds.

Here the painting is nearly finished, I have added pastel to the plants in the foreground.  I will drab down and soften the pastel plants so we feel that we can walk right into the scene without tripping.  As I mentioned at the beginning, the sky could have used a little more punch, but it's not horrible.  For some reason the camera is making this painting look pretty gaudy.  It's definately colorful, but not this much.

Arches National Park at sunrise.  I had add one more photo, it bothered me that the last one wasn't cropped properly.