Sunset in Valley, Ronda, Spain

Painted just before the sun went down, this scene was in Ronda Spain. It was done during my 1998 trip to France and Spain. There is another painting I did just before this one called Sunset in Ronda that I posted on a previous blog. Here, I am sitting on a tiny ourcrop that is on the edge of a steep cliff that goes down into the valley... I was looking almost straight down into the valley when I painted this. It's funny what I remember about this moment, there were a lot of ants at my feet. I recently took a bunch of photos of my older paintings, so I'll be posting a few of the old ones, including several sunset scenes.

Painting a sunset is by far the hardest landscape scene to do, mostly because it does not last very long... but also because the lack of sun makes the paint dry slowly. The air was very dry in Ronda so the paint must have dried pretty fast, I can tell from the amount of detail I was able to put in. A lot of the technique for this painting believe it or not, came from a painting trip I did in Hamilton Ontario...there were a few key paintings I did there where I discovered the mixtures needed for that purple-blue-green colour that I used here to depict the tree covered mountains in the distance. Also, the back-lit trees in the foreground was a technique I discovered painting in and around Bolton Ontario in the mid 90's. As I look back on my landscape painting, I believe that it started in abut 1995 with studio paintings from photograph, and I did my first landscape on location probably in 1996.

5.5x8" cold press (300lbs), 1998

PS, 300lbs paper is much heavier than what I usually use (140lbs).... it is like thick cardboard made from compressed cotton rag.