I had a great time in Lake Tahoe last week.  I painted a couple plein air, but they need some adjustment in the studio before I consider finished.  This is a studio painting of the north/east shore, on the Nevada side. The friends we stay with their have a speed boat, so we were able to visit lots of little coves accessible by water.

This was painted 100% by palette knife. I wished I’d taken interim photos, because I think it would have made a good demo. The painting is basically 4 bands of color, so I started it much like I would a Hensche still life, like this one.  That is, large bands of solid color, with white in between.  I keep the white there only because I don’t want edges to touch until I’ve worked out the basic color relationships for each block of color.  With the four bands of color down, I continued to adjust the color of each band.  When I got them right, I brought the edges of the color bands together, then started to model the objects within each band.  For example, the rocks started as a medium value rock color. I then added shadow sides of the rocks (first scraping that area a bit to avoid creating muddy color), then mid-tones, light sides, color variation (warm/cool) within each rock and finally darkest darks.  The same approach was used for the trees and water.  The sky stayed relatively solid, although I did add some flecks of lighter blue/green at the horizon of the sky.

Lake Tahoe, Oil on Linen, 8x6
Lake Tahoe, Oil on Linen, 8x6

AVAILABLE IN MY STORE

I’m in the North Tahoe Plein Air show next month, and a hotel and restaraunt in the area is interesting in buying some of my Truckee River work, so looks like I’ll be painting Tahoe scenes a few weeks now.

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