Overcast Winter Day

I finished this painting this last weekend also. Once again I painted from reference photos, since the weather has not really cleared up yet. I am not really good at painting outdoors in cold snowy weather, especially if it is windy. This is from a local hike near where I live. The day was pretty cold, the aftermath of the snow storm, but the sun was starting to come through.
Winter Sun, 8 x 10.

More from the Mountains

A big Arctic front moved in on Friday so all that balmy weather we have been having all winter is gone and now we've got the kind of weather that the East Coast has been experiencing. So my plans to go out painting this weekend were put on hold. I sat in Saturday while the blizzard was swirling outside, painting from my reference photos. I took a lot of photos of ice and frozen streams and have always liked the look of the mountain streams with the rocks and ice and pools of water. This is a painting I started earlier this week and finished yesterday, one of those rocky streams we hiked along.
River Rocks, 9 x 12.

Mountains and Shadows

I was at Rocky Mountain Park last weekend and hiked around taking pictures. We got there in the morning, just an hour drive away for us, and wandered around looking at the ice in the rivers and taking photos. Here's a painting I did from one of my photos. It was a relatively warm beautiful day for February. Out of the Shadows, 8 x 10. I just updated the photo for this one, since I was able to scan it.

Pink Sky

Here's a painting I've been working on for a few weeks.  It hasn't turned out exactly like I wanted it to be but it was sort of an educational experience. I wanted to do this picture with the foreground in shadow but wasn't sure exactly how dark it should be. My first attempt was not dark enough, still not sure if it is really dark enough now but didn't want to lose all the detail in the dark areas. Still - it's time to go onto other projects so I am going to stop here and maybe try another picture like this again some other time. It's a view off of Rabbit Mountain looking toward the southwest. Pink Sky, 12 x 16.

Heading Down

Here's a painting I did this weekend of a place in the foothills about 8 miles away. The foothills are layers of red sandstone sediment that were pushed up millions of years ago by the uplift of the Rocky Mountains. The mountains are pretty abrupt here. The plains abut right up to the mountains with these sandstone cliffs and hills where they meet. While hiking around in the foothills at one of these places (many have been designated as open space/county parks) the trail passes this place where you can look down one of the stream courses toward the plains. It's relatively dry and the vegetation likes to grow where the water goes. It's one of my favorite views in this particular park. I painted it once before a couple years ago and things have changed a bit so I decided to try it again. I really liked the different colors of the shrubs and grasses.  Heading Down, 9 x 12.

Also I updated the photos for the pitcher and the curved road in recent posts. I was finally able to scan them, so the picture colors should look a little more accurate now.

Down by the river

Yesterday was another super abnormally warm day for February and it just happened to be the day of the weekly paint-out by the PAAC ( Plein air artists of Colorado) which I recently joined, so I decided to head out and go painting. It just happened that the meetup place for the week was a place where I often go to paint and is close by so that was pretty handy.

I got there first and no one was around but little by little they trickled in, and by the time I finished up around 14 artists were there. Here is my painting for the morning. River Thicket, 9 x 12.

This spot was just upriver from a new beaver dam. The banks of the river are still piled with flood debris from the catastrophe in the fall of 2013. Mountains are far distant in the background.

Sagebrush

Here's another painting done from reference photos from California. This was from a little earlier in the evening before the sage was completely drenched in the shadows by the sunset. The location was similar to the scenes I painted in two earlier pictures.  Since this is still very wet and can't be scanned yet, it's a photo.  Shadowed Sage, 9 x 12.

Curve in the Road

While driving around west of town on the way back from a winter hiking trip I passed this scene. The sun was close to setting and there was still a little snow here and there in the shadows. The road was covered with tracks from a muddy dirt side road, in fact, the one I had just driven up. As I turned onto the paved road the view was very striking and I decided I had to paint it.

I have been working on this off and on for a few weeks also and it is pretty much done except for the drying. I was using some glazes on it and they are taking longer to dry than I expected.
Curve Ahead, 12 x 24, Sold.

This is finally dry so here is a scanned version of the painting.