Black Star Ranch

This spot is on the border between Orange and Riverside Counties.  It is part of the Black Star Ranch which has been around in some form or another for about a hundred years.  The seasons in Southern California are a little different from your typical four season parts of the country.  Late winter is what I would call the green season.  The light and the colors were what interested me here.

I was painting on a board prepared with pumice gel and acrylic paint.  I used Payne's gray and Quinacradone Crimson to produce a deep purple which was the color of the deepest shadows in the hills.  The birch plywood I was painting on was a square in shape and presented some compositional challenges based on the subject I was going to paint.  The vertical line in my reference sketch shows the approximate dimensions of the board.  In order to get my subject to fit I had to change the emphasis of the painting so there was much more sky than I originally intended.  It was the only way to get the hills into the painting without chopping up the composition.