Mt. Gardner from View Ridge Trail

I decided to get going early today so I could get out fishing in the afternoon.  Subject for today – Mt. Gardner from Sun Mountain.  In May, Catherine and I did a four day trip to Sun Mountain Lodge.  On this day we did a 12 mile hike from the lodge around most of the back half of the Sun Mountain 50k route.  This view of Mt. Gardner greeted us on the aptly named View Ridge Trail.   Flowers were in bloom in the meadow and the hills were still green, just starting to turn to their usual ochre color.  I’ve already diverted from only my tenkara adventures this year but am sticking to fishing and hiking trips we’ve done in Washington State for the 30 paintings.

I tried to do a larger oil of this earlier in the year and got stuck on the foreground and never finished it up.   I found acrylics were better for the foreground and getting the green in the hills right since I actually painted them in shades of ochre and then washed a light green over top.  The sky and mountain, however, were much harder to get to right in acrylic, I added retarder to be able to work a bit wet-in-wet on the sky but it still had a tacky feel compared to oils.  I also ran into the issue of the paint drying darker and had to go back and re-work the background forested areas multiple times to get the color right.  At least acrylic dries fast enough to do this in a two hour painting session.