Saturday, April 25, 2015

Rattlesnake Ridge

Rattlesnake Ridge
plein air oil  8" x 10"
$100.00 + $10. s/h

This is another plein air painting from our recent trip to California.  It was painted at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego.  One of my biggest challenges here was to simplify the cliff.  I was parked in the furthest parking lot by the tide pools.  I had a great view of the whole cliff and in my first sketch I included a lot of the cliff.  I realized that was too big of an area to cover quickly in a plein air pieces.  My next sketch focused in on a small section.  An additional challenge is to paint moving waves.  I tried to get them in pretty quickly and just left them alone.  I like how the water motion turned out.  I wish I'd been there longer...I would have gone back to the same spot again.


Here is my set up and great view.  Below you can see the rattlesnake that crawled nearby.  
A bicyclist got a park ranger who loaded him up in a bucket and drove him away.   He said that two people had recently been bitten by rattlers.  In my mind, he was a little bit too close for comfort.




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