Pumpjack Stormy Skies

11x15 watercolor on Fabriano 140 lb cold press rough paper completed over the weekend, a west Texas landscape at dusk with a pumpjack working hard. Stormy skies are overhead and nighttime is approaching in this dramatic oilfield from one of my petroleum photos. COPYRIGHT 2020 Kay Smith

Oilfield Icon - Pumpjack

22x30 watercolor on Arches 140 lb cold press paper with Daniel Smith/American Journey paints.  My photo reference is between Big Spring and Snyder, Texas in what is now known as the new and largest ever oil discovery, the Cline Shale.  I took 3 days to carefully and painstakingly draw this directly onto the support, then all week to finish it.  The original pumpjack was painted a pale yellow so I've used artistic license to darken the metal frame and its supporting structures.  A farmer was plowing in the cotton field to the right but he's left out of the composition of this very large pumpjack, the icon of the oilfield.

Sandstorm with Pumpjacks

22x30 watercolor on 140 lb cold press Saunders Waterford paper. An imaginary west Texas scene, it is complete with distant buildings and oilfield pumpjacks silhouetted against a hot stormy sky.  A lone pumpjack is busy in the near foreground, a cotton field.  With the recent discovery of the huge Cline Shale in our own Howard County, I'm sure to paint many more scenes, so stay tuned.