Designing with Dots

Recently, I have been fascinated by the shapes and colors of desert mesas, often replacing them with stacks of pancakes, with eggs as clouds in the sky, this theme evident in works like Welcome to Clarion, Texas. This is in part inspired by the artwork on Celestial Seasonings tea boxes, which often feature fruit replacing an object, such as an orange replacing the balloon on a hot air balloon. Moon and Mesas was a departure from this fantastic world, instead making the clouds and cacti more angular, but still focusing on the detail of the mesas.

To make this work, I started with my trusty 2B pencil, sketching the scene I had in my head. After some sketching, I decided the scene needed more circles, so I decided to challenge myself to do a brightly lit night scene, as shadows are something I struggle to understand. After sketching, I broke out the black, blue-black and brown Microns to darken up the lines. After ink, I hit the sky with a bit of color using Prismacolor colored pencils and white gel pen to highlight the moon. Next, still using colored pencils, I made the mountains unusual colors, feeling as though the scene needed something unusual. I chose to echo the colors of the cacti in the largest mountain to try to create some unity. After the mountains came the mesas, then the plants and finally the desert itself. I chose to not burnish the desert in the same way as the rest of the piece as to try to create a softer, moonlit feel.