Want prints of these landscapes? Enough suggestions will finally nudge me to offer them!

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So right after making Moonlight Clearing, my mom lost her fight with bladder cancer - fuck cancer, btw - and I didn't get to show her that finished piece. I managed to work out Cloudy Sunset afterwards, and I had taken yet another break from art.

During this time, I had been going through my mom's belongings, and came across some of the pieces of art she saved! This is one such piece. I had always done some form of art since I was a young child. After years of begging for something more than what I considered to be terrible kid-friendly watercolors, I finally was gifted a set of acrylic paints, and I feel this was when my work as an artist truly began to take off. This piece, which I've named "Hazy Mountain" was one of my first ever paintings. I can't remember the first piece I ever made and I don't know if I can find it, but I remember making these pieces, and rapidly using up the few canvas boards I got that Christmas.

I've lost any attachment to my old art physically, so I've decided to migrate towards archiving them digitally - remembering my past, but letting go of it in some ways has been tough but for me, a sort of freeing thing.

Rambling aside, my first attempt at what I considered a "real" painting in 2004 also introduced me to what I call paint/color management - something I failed to do, as I ran out of pure white paint for the clouds as I worked on highlights before adding them in AFTER painting most of the piece. To that end, I sort of worked with what I had - some light-green-tinted "white" paint, and while it was a mistake, it gave a whimsical look to this piece, looking back. Every time I see this, I feel like it looked like some sort of early CGI piece of a prehistoric scene; that green haze looking like fog that obscures culling, and... I don't know. The limitations that I unintentionally imposed on myself gave me a surprisingly nice look. I even remember whining about not having that fancy painting knife that Bob Ross used - leading to that soft edge of the mountain which made things look blurry and fuzzy.

Fast forward 20 years, and I decided I was going to start remastering my old art - imposing a few restrictions in the process! Every single color for the new piece was derived from the original painting - nearly. I cheated a bit and took advantage of the glare from the light to fudge a few colors into being lighter than they really were, but there's no real use of white in this piece. Using the skills I've gained over the years, I re-painted this piece digitally, and I have to say, the final piece looks amazing.

Me and my friends would regularly make the "RTX OFF/ON" joke about this piece!