Painting Arizona....The Sunset Paintings

'Beauty is Everywhere'. 5x7. Pastel

There's nothing like a good dust storm to make the sunset interesting. But it didn't really happen much to the disappointment of the channel 12 news crew. We decided to try to paint the sunset on Friday. So we picked a spot overlooking the big hayfields of the reservation. We arrived early to get set up and passed the channel 12 news van. We were planning on driving further but decided to park near the van joking that we would be in the news.

Here we are all set up. The sky wasn't looking very exciting. We were afraid that sunset might be a dud. After awhile one of the news crew walked over to see what we were doing. We explained that we were Plein air painters and that we were there to paint the sunset. He shared that the crew was there to do a news segment on dust storms....but that there was no dust that evening. We told him to do a story about the Plein air painters......he said they just might and walked away.

Meanwhile we painted away. My goal was to try to quickly capture the changing sky as the sun set. I worked furiously and managed to paint 8 studies in the hour we were there. The sunset was not spectacular. It was a bit dull but with the distant purple mountains it was still very beautiful.

As the sun sank behind the mountain the distant city lights began to twinkle. It was magical. No dust and no fiery sunset but instead a subtle and gentle beauty. We were surprised when the news guy walked back over to us and asked to snap a photo. He said he referenced us in the evening news and needed our picture. A fun way to end the day!

 

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