Textured acrylic

The last of the acrylic Paint My Photo challenges for 2nd quarter is a textured painting.  I found a fascinating photo posted by Robyn Lovelock, a good friend in Australia, taken by her husband of an interesting canyon area in Oz that has lots of red rocks and an interesting tree called Ghost Gums.  I made this the subject of my textured painting.  I started with a layer of iridescent gold gesso, painted the background with various deep color and dropped rubbing alcohol, which disperses acrylic paint, into the paint before it was dry.  Next was putting molding paste on the foreground knoll and allowing that to dry for 24-48 hours.  From there it was working on the painting itself with various deep reds, purples and oranges for the rocks and finally a pale green and pale gold for the trees.  Here is "Canyon Ghosts."

A Bryce Canyon success

Ever since I visited Bryce Canyon about 6 years ago,  I've been trying unsuccessfully to paint the place.  
This winter, I invited Lian Zhen to come down to Yuma and do a workshop (referred to earlier on the blog) and specifically asked him to do part of the workshop on desert landscapes.  The painting that I did in that workshop is shown earlier on here and it sold almost immediately at an art show in Yuma two weeks after I painted it.  I decided I'd try another desert landscape and hauled out all my Bryce Canyon photos to find a good reference.  The result is Bryce Hoodoo, shown here:

This is another 3 color painting.  Only Prussian Blue, Azo Yellow and Anthraquinoid Scarlet were used to get all of the delicious colors here.