Hillside Shadows II - pastel painting

I was drawn to the reference for this because of the simple, abstracted shapes of the hills and shadows/light.   I made several compositional changes from the original reference photo, including removing the highway at the bottom and varying the positions of the dried grasses and adding the shallow gully.  The juniper shrubs and distal mesa add some depth and a sense of scale.

My goal was to work quickly and not fiddle with it; it took just over an hour after I'd blocked in the basic shapes with a charcoal pencil and white Conte pencil.  I chose the medium value blue paper intending that some would show through, so no blending at all was done, other than scumbling of layers.  Bringing some of the purple-gray used in the clouds scumbled on the blue shadows helped to harmonize it a bit.

Hillside Shadows II

12 x 16 inches

pastel on Strathmore 500-series paper

I think one of the things that draws me to this series of photos that were taken within a relatively short period of time and small geographical area is the wide variance of the topography, all of which I find visually appealing.