From Underpainting to Grand Canyon

Inspired by our recent trip to the incredible Grand Canyon, I decided to paint my impressions of the trillions of years of layers that made that amazing place onto the underpainting I recently posted. It already had many wet-on-wet layers, and I added many more wet-on-wet and some wet-on-dry layers. I am fairly satisfied that it expresses my intention. It has an ancient, layered Grand Canyon feeling to it.

While I felt OK about this painting, I knew it was inadequate, because as Milford Zornes once said, "You can't paint the Grand Canyon." Then I found out that he DID paint the Grand Canyon, and so I tried to copy one of his paintings to see how he did it.  You can see how that turned out  by clicking here.