This is a spread of thumbnail studies in my art journal that I made from photos during my recent trip to Loreto. They really surprised me!

I’m not a landscape artist. I love vistas and views, but when I’m out in the world my eye tends to zoom in to the particulars. Like when I entered the Posado Las Flores on this same trip last week. It was immediate. I had to draw the entryway. I had no real desire to draw the town plaza or the foreign desert landscape all around me.

I do take pictures, though. And I enjoy painting abstracts.

So one afternoon