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The end of my three month stint painting en plein air in Baja California Sur is coming to a close. I'm primarily a plein air painter who had been living in western Washington State year-round -- not a great place in the winter for plein air painting. This year I couldn't bear to face winter wthout regularly painting outdoors, so here I am. It's been a productive winter in Baja Sur. My aim here has been to focus more clearly on values and hues within the large masses, while also loosening up on my finish work. After workshops with Camille Przewodek, a master colorist in California, Ken Roth in Bend Oregon and James Moore on Whidbey Island, Washington, I was ready to paint my heart out in the hot sun or warm shade of the Baja. Here you'll find some of the results of that effort. These paintings are available for sale, or you may want to participate in the monthly auction of one of these paintings per month for the year 2012.

The south end of Playa San Pedrito has many interesting rocks and I often walk that beach and then go there to study those forms, the shadows they cast and the play of water on and around them. This is one of my Baja Sur series that I started in November and will end when I go back to rainy Seattle on January 31. Maybe I'll put it in my "One Painting per Month Auction" that will continue through 2012.

The shadow of the rock would be blue -- yes, it's a rock - if it wasn't cast on the sand because the sand there has a lot of gold color in it -- so what do we get when we mix blue and yellow? Yes, a green shadow. The water, as it seeps into the sand and trickles in abstract shapes, is an interesting study in itself, causing patterns in the sand and small, sparkling pools.

Another of my series from Baja Sur, this is a tiny old silver and gold mining town called El Triunfo, although the mine works closed in 1926. A smoke stack designed by Gustav Eiffel is still there. This view is from a high point of the highway. Massing in the values and hues was challenging during the painting process, since there was so much variety of landscape to cover. The hills were also challenging, but in another way. All of them were covered in what looked like fuzz, the small bushes and low trees. If I had been further away, the mountains would have been blues and more solid looking, but as it was, an almost dry brush scumbling over those expanses was necessary.

"Serene Sierra de la Lagunas 1" is January's auction painting from my time in Mexico, starting off the new year, at a starting bid of $149. Email me your bid to jowellsmoran@gmail.com. Watch for a new painting of Mexico to be auctioned each month of 2012.