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.