next steps:"old '49 headin' west"

next steps: "old '49 headin' west"

i got this new color, prussian blue, and have been looking for a place to try it out.  i decided to use it in the sky of this painting which was the next thing that i would do here. it proved, as i suspected, to be a little much but, what the heck, its only paper. in the shadows of the clouds i stuck with the more traditional, for me, cobalt blue and burnt sienna.  the distant hillside was painted in prussian blue, permanent alizarin crimson, and a bit of raw sienna just barely mingled on the palette and then applied to the paper and allowed to mix there. i used the same colors for the nearer, larger mountainside but in a darker value. i softened the bottom edge on both of these so that when i painted the more foreground/midground structures i could avoid a sharp line underneath them. i may have left the barn at the right a little too isolated. i think if i do something like this again i might do the barn or a structure like it right after the truck and get my tie-ins right away rather than worrying about them after the fact. i have said it before, i find that softening a hard edge is difficult after it has dried but restating a lost edge is fairly easy. i think that is it for now as the desert beckons. more tomorrow.