Newer landscape painters are always interested in one topic: how to start a painting. How-to magazine articles on landscape and plein air are sure to run through the usual steps in beginning a painting. Rightly so because if a painting is poorly started then you spend the rest of the painting session correcting.

Most painters begin by "drawing" in the defining edges and shadows with a dark paint, giving solid landmarks for painting objects. The next step varies by painter but is usually something along the lines of further developing all of the light and dark areas.

I too "draw" with paint on smaller works and that gets the painting going fast. My approach is different for larger works which are begun with a well developed drawing usually in graphite and then charcoal. In that way I am certain that everything is where it should be (or where I want it) and that the dark areas are fully stated. After that all that's left is the fun stuff of painting!

Here's a project that I've been working on for a while, interrupted with patchs of life and other stuff. The scene is of the Borrego Badlands at Ocatillo Wells. It's a foreboding place and a dangerous one too as many settlers lost their lives out there. When you think of wandering about the desert of the southwest, this and Death Valley are the places!

What especially attracted me to this scene was the fact that it was spring and that set up a nice contrast: the foreboding far distance versus the green life in the foreground. So here it is in the first stage with the drawing almost ready to receive paint. Can't wait to get going on this one!!

"Borrego Badlands", 20 by 36 inches, oil on stretched canvas, gallery wrapped.