Blog

Baja California Sur is primarily gray. Well, kind of gray. So then, why do tourists come here so much? Why do so many people think it's beautiful? When I first visited a few years ago, I kept wondering; How can I paint this? Even if I can, wouldn't the panting be drab and dead-looking? So many of the desert plants here are various grays. Then, I realized that the tranquility experienced in the desert was related to the grays -- and that the almost-neutral grays are a gorgeous foil to the spacious cerulean skies, incredibly iodine-smeared sunsets, majestic cordons (the large cowboy-type cacti), the occasional green bushes and trees, towering palms and turquoise, greens, blues and violets of the water, the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific. Oregon artist, Ken Roth, was the first instructor to point out clearly to me how a neutral can set off color.

Of course, there are plenty of lushly green tropical (human-made) spaces here in Baja Sur and they're certinly beautiful in their own right, but the desert, even on the ocean, is rarely so filled with bright, pure color. After it rains, rarely if at all between November and July -- and and usually during the very hot months of August, September and into October -- all of those "dead," gray plants show themselves alive with light green foliage and lots of flowers. That too is beautiful, but I actually prefer those surprises of color (and the weather!) alongside the sleeping grays.

So, here I am again in Baja Sur, this time to paint six out of seven days -- concentrating particularly on the grays with the juxtaposition of Baja Sur colors. 

The Sierra de la Laguna mountains in Baja Sur are one of my favorite places, so I've wanted to paint there for a long time. Beyond the challenges of the road to this preserve and the hike, there also a couple of interesting painting challenges. Values were somewhat challenging as they become closer together as the hillsides drop into a "V" pattern, and then there was -- as is often true in plein air painting -- the challenge of choosing what should be left in and what left out, particularly in the mid- and close distances. The values were close in the  valleys due to the loss of light there. I chose just a sampling of the rocks, flora and fauna up close to convey the ruggedness of the terrain, as well as to help the eye move through it, and just a few impressions of the fields off to the right in the mid-distance to show the beauty of looking towards the lower farmlands as they begin in the hills. Without any of the farmlands included, I thought the scene would have appeared more barren than it is and the eye would have stopped too long, trapped in a valley.

There are no cool breezes on this hike until the hiker gets up further or waits until night time. The Sierra de la Laguna is an ecological preserve and I entered from the the highway side near Todos Santos (between Todos Santos and Pescadero. The 12-mile drive up the sandy, bumpy, rutted entry road to the park entrance is an adventure in itself and isn't open in the summer months, July through October.

In my memory it was always hot at "the lake," there was always Orange Crush and beer cooling in the water gently lapping at the shore, water skiiers fled by occasionally and the sound of waves against the inside of the boat house meant summer. When not at my uncle's cabin on Lake Sutherland, the lake was a vision of deep greens and blues as we raced past it to somewhere else. Here's one of those green and blue days, with a dash of purple and a few autumn accents around the lake. Lake Sutherland is one of my favorite places on the Olympic Peninsula and I was happy to paint there for the first time while at my brother's house on the lake in October. The values were fairly simple to capture that afternoon, since thre was clear contrast between the lights and darks, but the hues were more of a challenge.

As the hills and ridge receded, it was difficult to see the hues change much, but the painting didn't look right without exaggerating the loss of yellows and subtracting it from the greens so that blues and then, purples, predominated. I could have done a bit more with the sky, but the radiant pinkish hue was the major impression, so I stuck with just a bit of bluish overlay at the top.

I'd really like to see it now -- how the lake looks with even more orange and touches of red from the maple trees and vine maples, but by the time I'd be able to make it there, that moment would be the past.