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…...…………..…...--- Valley of the Gods Backdrop ---=======================================

Still need to put clouds on the last backdrop but decided to move onto an area I’d painted a scene on the backdrop earlier this year but wanted to change the scene.

I wanted to try using a scene from Valley of the Gods which is about 40 miles south of town and near Monument Valley. It is on the north side of the San Juan River where Monument Valley is on the south side of the river. Scenery is similar but instead of way over a 1000 people a day for Monument Valley during tourist season there might be 100-200 or less. It is an area we usually take visitors to and the road is dirt so a high clearance vehicle is recommended.

I found the image above and cropped it and sized it to 20 inches which came out to about the height I wanted (6 inches) and allowed it to be printed on two pieces of paper.

The two prints were taped together and cut along the skyline like what I did on the last backdrop. Above you can see there was going to be parts of the old back drop showing and I didn’t want that so painted anything behind the print that showed sky color. I might end up painting all of the old skyline blue and repainting it also.

The print was taped in place and the outline was penciled in. A real artist would probably sketch it in and not track the skyline, but I’ll cheat a little. I then did sketch in the foreground outlines in the bet I could. Then started on the far background (right side) and moved to the foreground (not sure if this is recommended or not?).

Then started painting towards the left.

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The next scenes are the finished work.

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Even though I was in a more comfortable painting position I was still standing the whole time and reaching in some. I would wear out after a few hours and need a break.

The colors above are the ones I used for the scene. Three of them are what I use to paint the rockwork and the other three came from the craft section at the local Ace Hardware.

Clouds are up next for the last two backdrop scenes that were just painted.

A link to this whole build ( HERE ).

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