Another High Sierra Acrylic Painting

I finished this one last week for my two-man show at the Elliott Fouts Gallery here in Sacramento. It was painted on stretched canvas and is 11"X14". Paintings are a series of challenges. That is why we painters don't get board with our passion. The challenge with this particular landscape was the rocks. Like trees, they are at first sight, damn complicated. The key word here is "sight". It may sound like an oxymoron, but if you can reduce the acuity of your sight, you can mange the complexity of what you see and want to paint (or draw). Most all artists do this by squinting. All that visual complexity is simplified or edited out. How? When squinting, you see less. Value is important here. You still easily see the darkest values as well as the lightest. But all those pesky values in between with their subtle tonal differences cannot be discerned nearly as well... I told you keep those eyes SQUINTED!!!...that' the trick, and that's what I did quite often as I looked at the rocks and even sometimes while I painted them. All I needed to paint was dark, light, and one or two middle grays on each rock. SQUINT and make your life easier.