Santa Fe Trail California

This was a scene I found while driving across the desert to California in the fall of 2006. It was a long drive, and the dry desert scenery was not inspiring for most of the trip. This colorful train appeared near the highway,as visual interest when I needed it most. We had a parallel path for many miles, and towards the end of the desert I passed it. When I finally reached California and stopped for gas, it reappeared just past the Joshua tree with the misty mountains in the distance. A beautiful scene. Since, I have learned of the recently remodeled Santa Fe depot in San Bernadino,keeping alive an important part of history. The Santa Fe RR really opened the west over a long formidable desert. And kept me company and gave me a painting.

Aspen Overlook

This one is large, 24 x 30. It still seemed too small to fit in the grandeur of the scene. If this was part of your commute between offices, wouldn't you do it on a Sunday so you could take all day to stop and enjoy the views. I did.

Even a day isn't long enough, you just want to be there and stay there in that visual feast of color and light. (Fall 2007 between Durango and Ouray.)

I've wanted to paint this for awhile, and the size of the canvas made me think I couldn't do it all at once because you can blend edges better if the adjoining paint is also wet. I learned that I could do the lay-in, then finish the work in sections, the trick was to have enough paint and work the edges accordingly.

Two more peaks

I did these two 1-20 and 1-21. The clouds were moving fast this morning, creating abstract form with rapidly changing soft and hard edges.

Renewing the Roses

I reworked the foreground in this one, the roses didn't seem quite finished. They were washed out by bright light in the reference photo, but didn't read right in the painting. Finishing them to the next degree seemed to tie the painting together.

Fresh Snow

Fresh snow on the peak, the little clouds above can be blowing snow with a wind, or real clouds. This morning they are real clouds, with a welcome blue sky!

Aspen and Pikes Peak

This one I just completed from a smaller plein aire I had done in the summer and a photo reference I had taken on site. Amazing how the plein aire gave the more accurate colors and the shadows were really off in the photo. This is why painting on location is so hard and so good, you get the real information!

Snowing on the Peak

This is #7 in the series, 3 more to go. Hoping for more snow on the peak, this morning its mostly granite. This was just a little dusting at 3:30 pm on 1-4-11.

Two more peaks

The first one at 1:15, the second at 4:30 pm. Love those sunsets this time of the year.

Twin Peaks

First one at 7:00 am, next one at 7:40 am, same subject, different light. I've always been in awe of this mountain that towers over us in Colorado Springs, and how it looks so different in different seasons and weather and times of day. There is not much snow yet this year, so the rocky crags appear and disappear into the shadows sometimes in a few seconds time. It's a good study.

Peak out My Window

This is my view of Pikes Peak, while I'm sitting here (minus the foreground of street and houses.) It was so pink at 7 am, I decided to paint it. In the time I got out my little canvas and paint it changed dramatically, then again in another 10 minutes. It probably didn't even take that long. Painting this fast is a challenge, but a canvas of 4 inches by 6 inches helps.

Snowy Deck

it was too cold to go out today, but I wanted to end the last day of the year doing a painting. I have learned a lot, and painted more, by doing this blog this year. Thank you to those of you who have taken the time to look and comment. Thank you to my artist friends, who inspire me by continuing to create. Thank you for the friendship of you who have suppported me in many ways during this past year. I appreciate you even though I haven't said it well enough. Happy painting and Happy New Year!

Portrait of a Pine

I did this little guy (6 x 8) in about an hour looking out a window. Didn't know how much could be accomplished from inside, but I had fun playing with the design and light, and the small format allowed me more time to tweak the colors and brushstrokes at the end. It was fun.

A Really Small Painting

On December 23, I drove to the Garden of the Gods to capture some of the white on the trees, and it was melting so fast, it was gone. Next time, I'll do a few from my window instead. The trees were still there, as were the red rocks, so I painted a few of them. I had tucked some tiny canvases in my pocket, as it was cold to start, and did a 4 x 6 inch of evergreens. Tis the season!

A White Christmas

This was a wonderful gift, after driving to the Garden of the Gods to see the flocked trees, it really warmed up and I painted a little 6 x 8 of Pikes Peak and the foreground of Cottonwoods there on location in the Park. In December, there is always snow on Pikes Peak. Merry Christmas!

Dry Painting

For me, this means absorbing with my eyes to add to my "visual encylopedia" of painting knowledge. There is a lot of beauty and information to soak up here with our recent "fog" which has flocked the trees with a coating of white powder. (There are changing light effects, new color and value relationships, snow is hugely transformative of everything.) I'm also reading about other painters through history and why they did what they did. Yesterday, I sat in front of the fire and re-read "Painters and the American West" from the 2000 Denver Art Museum Show. We all (painters included) are influenced by our cultural context, probably more than we realize. It's really interesting to see how it shows up in hindsight. I'm also reading Kevin Macpherson's book "Landscape Painting, Inside and Out." What a wonderful mentor through his books and year of experienced knowledge as a plein aire painter. Art offers such a continuous life-long learning opportunity. There is always more to discover.

Another Re-work

This is the one that has bothered me the most of all my paintings. It was a fabulously colorful scene with the rough rock formations, fall foliage along the river. I took many photos, and was thanking God I got to drive here. The painting even won "People's Choice" in a gallery show I did in Montrose in 2008. I didn't like the colors, and wanted to rework it, but didn't know how. Today, I just printed up a little 4 x 6 print of it, and started in. I added more brushwork, soft edges, and got the colors right! Finally, I'm pleased with the results. It just took me 2 years to learn.

Pumpkin Cows- a beginning

These are the first 2 steps in a large painting (24 x 36)of a farm scene. On a trip up I-25 for work, a field of orange caught my eye, then I realized it was a pumpkin field (after Halloween) and the cows were eating what was left of the harvest. I first created a composition out of the scene by covering the canvas and sculpting out the images of the cows where I wanted them. The next step was adding the background, the primary cows and the foreground pumpkins. It still has some more fleshing out to do, but have approached this one in a little different way, and its been an interesting process.

Lavender Re-Work

This is another one I reworked late this summer (18 x 24 oil on canvas). I loved the scene, its from a photo I took at the lavender field at Los Poblanos near Albuquerque from 2003 where we visited and stayed for a few days. I had it hanging on my wall, and the longer I looked at it, realized I wanted to make it more interesting. It seemed flat, and I wanted more texture and depth. I include both versions, the new one is above on the left.

Rework from 2002

This was a 16 x 20 oil painting I did in 2002 of a building at Ghost Ranch near Abiquiu, always loved the scene because I had good memories of being here. As the years went on, I knew there were some elements that I would like to change, but didn't know how. This morning, I pulled it off the wall and had at it. Sometimes it takes a while and like I've heard before, "no painting is safe until its on somebody else's wall." See new version above.

keep on painting/sketching

It's almost the end of the year that I said I would paint every day for a year. Well, I haven't. But I've painted more than I have in past years because I've had a goal, and I've gotten better at painting. This isn't even a painting. It's an ink sketch, a quick sketch. I've sorted through my sketchbooks in the last few days, and its been an interesting history lesson, going back to 1993. Keeping a sketchbook is a really good idea, and I want to do sketches from life more often. It's good practice, and there is always something that you can draw from life, even if its your dog. She is good at one minute poses, so its good experience for quick sketches. This is something that I can do every day for a year. A few minutes focused on something you want to capture is almost as good as painting, and value sketches are critical to creating an interesting composition.