This is it. This is finally the texture-y, right in between Impressionistic and realistic look that I’ve been going for.

I also like the colors in this. Not too sweet, but not too monochromatic either.

This painting is an attempt to capture the eerie afternoons that happened last summer, when we had our usual season of wildfire smoke blowing in from Oregon. Not only can you smell the smoke, but it can actually dim the sunlight enough to lower the temperature.

During one of these afternoons last year, I went out and tried to photograph the odd effect the smoke was having on the appearance of the sun.

My initial photos looked like this:

While accurate, these did not perfectly capture the vibe I was getting, so I tried taking some of the same scene with a variety of filters.

The filters do a better job capturing how red the sun looked to the naked eye.

I then did a painting using one of the filtered photos as a reference.

Obviously, there is room for many more paintings here, if I choose to pursue it.

I hope you enjoy being shown the reference photos beside the picture. I know some people like that. I recently learned the term “process journal” from a novel, which I thought was really cool. Apparently this is something that all art majors know about.

If you don’t like hearing about the process, just enjoy the painting and figure that you’ve somehow stumbled onto the cover of a Stephen King farm book.