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My recently finished painting, Backward Glance, features two wild burros in the Sonoran desert, near Lake Pleasant. The Lake Pleasant area has roughly 600 wild burros often viewed as an "invasive species". Some say they are descendants of the animals brought by the Spaniards in the 1500. Others say they are descendants of the pack animals brought to the area by gold miners much more recently -- 100 years ago. Either way, seeing them is always a treat for an artist.

If you click on the image of me painting below on the right, it will take you to a 40 second time lapse video of my blocking in the initial painting. Kinda fun to watch! You can also view it here: time lapse video

I often get asked "how long did that take you to paint?" That's an impossible question to answer. So many things go into a painting before it even starts. To take you behind the scenes for Backward Glance, I took several trips out to Lake Pleasant to photograph the wild burros.

Then from those references, I sketched various thumbnail designs using markers. These sketches also act as value studies (patterns of light and dark).

From the design I liked best, I painted two small color studies on canvas paper shown side by side below.

Then onto the final painting!