An opaque Watercolor Tau Pan and poem

The painting is a quick study in opaque watercolor for several other paintings I did of the same subject.  I like the direct brushwork and muted colors I can get with the opaque paint.  Being able to put the lights on top of the darks allows me to define the light without having to cut around or build darks. 

Rain pelts parched brown dirt

Dust belched like little smoke stacks

mirage lakes glimmer

Across the hard pan we rode bouncing and swaying, hands tight on the hot black metal roll bars. The sun fried us like bacon on a hot griddle, the air just shy of combustible, the ground was cracked and dry, clouds of fine layering dust rolled up off the squeaking tires, coating our clothes like grandma’s flour biscuits. Other than the rumbling rattle of our behemoth land rover, the world was a quiet stillness like a nature documentary with a missing sound track. The animals were not moving and were clustered inside the small specks of shade sprinkled around Deception Valley. We pushed harder into the sweltering African desert, sage oozed its’ cloying oily fragrance into the rising afternoon heat; mixing with the dust to coat our skin. When we stopped to have tea the dust, rolled over us like an angry trailing sea but just off the road two bat-eared foxes sat eating a long black snake, a scene worth the drive, Africa.

Eyes squint, small slits

glare of the afternoon sun

reflects off my watch face