Touched by the Sun is an original acrylic painting by Ellen Jean Diederich featuring a landscape of Zion National Park in Utah.
Behind the piece: Last fall I showed photographs of beautiful Zion National Park in my blog. We were so lucky to drive into the park at sunset and see many of the mountains and bluffs lit up. The next morning Paul and I hopped on their earliest tour bus to the trails. “Touched by the Sun” was inspired from a moment when the mountains tops and bluffs were purple and pink but were highlighted bright orange on their very tips. The grey green cottonwoods blocked out most of the foreground adding a beautiful neutral to this scene.
Learning to paint landscapes and capturing its texture is challenging. I use fluid acrylics that do build some texture yet at the same time can be transparent. Zion Park has so many different types of rock formations. See the variety of directional strokes used to create the rock formations.
