Scarlet Mountain (Acrylic Water Media)

This is the painting I have been working on and I finished it this afternoon.  This is part of a series of paintings that I call "Mountain Daydreams" because I paint them from my imagination as well as my memories of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the state where I grew up.  I use acrylic paint with water on watercolor paper. I use water as part of the process: I put water on the paper and let it drip. I spray water on the painting; I make marks with the brush and then rub part of the paint off with a sponge. All of this creates the look of the detail of the natural world. I have been building this painting up with layers, adding complications to get the feel of the natural world, and then simplifying, to return to the original complication. Today I put the final layer of cadmium red on the mountain, to return to the simple composition that I started with: a bright red mountain against the sky.