"Black Mountain Fall" is acrylic on canvas, 36x60." This past October, some friends were kind enough to let me and the kids go stay in their beautiful home in Black Mountain, North Carolina. The colors of the autumn leaves and the grandiosity of the mountains were incredibly inspiring. I took pictures of the vista from their house and did a pour as soon as I returned to Raleigh.

After it dried, I applied some glazes to achieve the warmth I wanted. Then I sketched the silhouette of the mountains and trees with chalk. Chalk can be wiped off dry acrylic paint with a wet sponge, making it the perfect tool for designing a mask. I started with the exact mountainous horizon from my photos, but it didn't translate into a very interesting silhouette. Part of the aesthetic intrigue of mountains is usually the depth and layers in the ranges. So I ended up loosely basing my horizon on the photos but exaggerating it. 

When it was time to do the trees, again, at first I followed my photos and had the trees coming straight up from the bottom. And again, when flattened into a silhouette, this did not look right. It looked like the mountain line was just bumpy ground with trees coming up from it. So I modified my design to have the branches coming in from the sides and not touching the horizon. This gave me the expanse of space I wanted from the eye back to the horizon line.

The first mask I applied was a robin's egg blue, like the clear skies that graced us for part of our stay in Black Mountain.

While that made representational sense, it didn't feel right to me. It wasn't warm enough, and it felt very separate from the colors in the pour. I decided to change (drastically) to a warm muted gold that would speak to the pour. This brought the piece together, allowing the eye to follow the gold tones all the way around the composition. Because of this change of direction, I was able to leave a slight blue halo (outline) around the mask. This is a neat detail that really helps emphasize the shapes of the trees and the horizon line. 

This piece will hang in my friends' home in Black Mountain and will always remind me of the warmth and beauty I experience there.