Red Hills

While travelling across Nevada we camped among these red hills. I worked from photos on this painting, photos that I took early in the morning before packing up the camp. The arroyos and rocky gullies were fun to hike around in, as long as you kept an eye out for rattlesnakes.

 This place is a rock collector's dream.  There are a lot of small shale-like rock slabs strewn everywhere, around an inch thick, and when walked through, they sound very porcelain-like, like kicked shards of broken pottery might sound. We found that if we gathered up various sizes and tapped them we could make a virtual rock xylophone, producing ringing tones of various pitches and playing simple tunes almost. That was our evening campfire amusement.

 In the morning it was very pretty. Cactus were just starting to bloom here and there and one could come across an occasional yellow or pink bloom while hiking around.  Red Hills, 10 x 14.