I rendered this image from a photo my son took two years ago. He was backpacking in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State (Mt. Baker — Snoqualmie National Forest), where he snapped a photo of Columbia Peak. A pair of high alpine lakes named “Twin Lakes” sat below, brilliantly colored in ultramarine blue.
In this piece, I’m working with some new techniques for pastel-on-canvas. For the sky, I have a palette of multiple shades of blue, grey & violet which I grind into the fabric of the canvas using a paper stump. For the rocky cliffs, I’m etching the outlines of the rocks, drawing scratchy dark lines to give the mountain a definitive texture. The foreground forest I rendered in softer strokes.
My son had virtually all of his worldly possession stolen from a U-Haul truck a few weeks ago. Amongst those possessions were paintings I’d gifted him over the years. This piece will replace one of my earlier mountain-scapes that were lost in the theft.
