"Sunset over Camelback" 12" X 24" Acrylic Mounted on 2" deep Cradled Panel

Sunset over Camelback by April M Rimpo

June of last year my husband and I spent a week in the Phoenix Arizona area, where we had lived for 17 years. We visited new food spots we had heard about, checked out the two homes we had lived in, went to a gallery in Old Town Scottsdale, visited Taliesin West (where Frank Lloyd Wright had an architecture school), and had an opportunity to visit with several friends while in the area. One set of friends had their annual wine party our last weekend, which we got to enjoy.

We stayed in a wonderful cabana at the home of another pair of friends for most of the week. They were great hosts, threw a party inviting former work buddies of my husband's, and treated us to great views of the McDowell mountains from their backyard and Camelback Mountain from the front yard. One evening I must have taken 50 photographs looking west toward Phoenix, as the sunset over Camelback Mountain. 

I finally painted Sunset over Camelback to remember our trip.  We had never lived in a location that was high enough in elevation to have such a wonder view of the mountain. Thanks to great friends whose company we got to enjoy while we were in town.

Cactus Wren "8 X 8" Fluid Acrylic

Cactus Wren (on Prickly Pear) by April M Rimpo

Cactus Wren

Fluid Acrylic on Gallery Wrapped Paper

8" x 8" x 1.5" deep

$200

 Available for Purchase Now

My family lived in Arizona for a number of years.  We loved cactus blooms and wanted to save water in the desert so our front yard and parts of the back were desert-scaped. Among the plants were prickly pear cactus and saguaro. The cactus wren like both, tending to build their nests in the saguaro but perching (and no doubt eating) on the prickly pears.  It was fun to watch the cactus wren since their dramatic white and black feathers on their otherwise tan bodies really were beautiful, especially in flight.  

The prickly pear plant is multi-hued and their fruit turned from green buds to hot pink and eventually matures to a beautiful reddish-purple fruit.  One year I made prickly pear jelly from the fruit.  It was good but boy a lot of work.  The plants themselves vary from pale greens to lovely shades of lavender.

When we visited friends in Arizona last year I had the opportunity to photograph some beautiful young prickly pear plants and cactus wrens perched on saguaros. I combined them in this painting as a tribute to memories of a wonderful trip and a great time visiting friends.

"Struggles in the Sourthwest", 24" X 34" gallery wrapped fluid acrylic on paper

Struggles in the Southwest by April M. Rimpo

You may remember my June blog post called Pouring Paint, about a workshop I had taken from Linda Baker.  During that workshop I painted Harder Times which was a close up of one grave in Mission Tumacácori.  I designed Struggles in the Southwest earlier but decided it was too much to tackle in a workshop and went with the simpler version. I visited Mission Tumacácori sometime in the 1980s as part of my explorations of Arizona. After moving to Arizona in 1980, my husband and I continued to explore many National sites with Indian ruins during our 17 years in the state.  One of my interests, in fact my initial major in college, was archaeology, so visiting these sites allowed me to catch a glimpse of the past.  To learn more about this Mission visit the National Park Service site.

Like Harder Times this painting was poured, but with fluid acrylic instead of watercolor. Below are a few images showing steps in creating this painting.

Value Sketch

I generally start each painting with a drawing of the outlines of the shapes in the painting, but this one was complex enough that I decided to do a value sketch. The purpose of a value sketch is to work out the darks, mid-value, and lights in the painting. I admit I went beyond a value sketch and toward a much more complete drawing. However this was done on tracing paper to allow me to more easily transfer the drawing to watercolor paper.

The image at right shows the result of the first pouring of acrylic paint.  The acrylic was poured after I transferred the drawing, then masked areas I wanted to keep white. The first pouring uses the lightest colors in the painting, filling the role of the lightest mid-tone.  To accomplish this with acrylic, the pigments are very diluted with water.



When the first layer dries, more masking fluid is added to some areas where I want the lightest mid-tone.  A second pouring is done that has nearly the same amount of water mixed with the paint. Since it is on top of the first layer of color, it looks darker.  I added more blues to the second pour allowing them to mix with the Quinacridone Coral pigment to create lovely lavender shades in areas where there are shadows.

In this third process photograph I have added a few darker areas and, when the paint dried, I removed the masking.  

Notice the golden tan stripe along the left edge.  After I gallery wrap the painting over a stretcher frame, the stripe will be on the edge of the painting. Sometimes I run the image around the edge and sometimes I use color stripes.

    

This last photo was taken after several touch-up sessions. A variety of dark colors is added in the darkest shadows under the rocks and more color to the crosses. A great deal of work was done on the rocks to blend some of the dark edges and to emphasize the twigs and grasses in the sand around the stones.

There was a small amount of additional touch-up to finish the painting after this image was taken.  The finished painting in the top image shows just the front of the painting after gallery wrapping.