Landscapes, Desert — watercolor painting by Ray Patrick
A violet mesa above a lit desert flat under towering cumulus, with a second study of red rock cropped by the top edge of the page.
The sky takes the upper half and the cloud rises from the left; the mesa runs level beneath it and steps down to the right. The flat below is laid in long horizontal bands of light and shadow.
Cerulean breaking through cloud in bone and dove, over a mesa of violet and plum. The flat is cadmium yellow, ochre and umber — the warmest passage in the sheet and the only saturated one.
The sky is flooded and the cloud reserved as bare paper rather than lifted. The flat below is dragged in long dry horizontal pulls so the grain of the sheet breaks the colour.
Watercolour on paper in a sketchbook. A studio photograph of a page with a second study above it.
Along the lower edge and again above, raypatrick, in pencil, letters widely spaced.