Art Journal

Since very few people look at this ( I think I've ended up with like 3 comments in the last 10 years)  I will probably not be adding any new entries after today unless there is a groundswell of support for continuing.  Not sure too many people ever look at it.

A couple last notes:

Rooftop, 16 x 16,  a painting I did in 2023 just won the best building award in the August Plein Air Salon, and my painting Misty Morning, 11 x 14,  won best of show at the Fraser Plein Air event in August 2025. 

Also my painting First Snowfall, 8 x 10 won the Artists Choice Award at the PAAC annual show in Central City CO in September, and Spring Walk, 8 x 10  won honorable mention at the Masters of Light plein air show at 3 Square Gallery in Ft. Collins in September. 

Below, pics of them all:

Rooftop,      Misty Morning

First Snowfall,      Spring Walk

Here's a studio painting I recently finished.  We've had some wildfires start up nearby in the foothills in the last week, some of which are still not completely under control, making the skies very smoky. This painting was done from some photos I took on a walk at Pella Crossing on one of those smoky days. Everything turns sort of pink. It was probably not a great idea to be out there hiking around in the polluted air but things really look different .

Wildfire Sky, 16 x 16

Over the last year I've done several paintings of scenes from rooftops, all inspired by views from a local parking garage. This is the ninth painting I've done on this theme and this one is in the Governor's show this year. Basically everything, AC units, heaters, swamp coolers etc, on top of the local roofs that I have seen are colored gray or variations of gray. The challenge is to play on that gray and accentuate the tendencies toward other colors that will make the painting more interesting. I like doing these because I can push the colors any way that I want to, and essentially they become color studies. Also the shadows are a lot of fun to deal with.

Rooftop #9, 16 x 16

Here's another painting that is part of the Governor's Show. We often take walks late in the afternoon and one day after a winter snowfall I saw this scene of the melting footsteps heading off in the distance. Something about it inspired me to make a painting .

Heading into Night, 20 x 24

Below  is the last of the four paintings I have put in the Governor's show. The inspiration for this was a plein air painting I did one January morning on a snowy day that I developed into a larger painting.

Snow in the Air, 16 x 20

And of course the last one, Vail Pass View, 16 x 20, which I already posted about.

The Governor's Show will open this coming Friday at the Loveland Art Museum in Loveland CO. I have four paintings entered in the show.  The opening for the public is Saturday May 11th.

One of my paintings in the show:

Vail Pass View, 16 x 20.

The idea for doing this painting developed from some charcoal drawings I did of some scenes in a local town.  I was working on a scene of the street corner and became interested in the shadows cast by all the items that are put on the corners - light posts, street signs, wheelbarrows that later get filled with flowers, newspaper display boxes, etc.  This seemed like an interesting thing to make a painting about, and I felt it had to be somewhat creative in color and very graphic to make it work. This is what I ended up with. This painting is entered in the Why Not Niwot contest coming up this summer.

Street Furniture, 16 x 16

Here I was playing around and did this mostly palette knife painting of a bouquet of white roses I picked up at the supermarket. The thick paint is taking forever to dry.

White Roses, 10 x 10.

This is from some photos I took during some dramatic sunsets while staying in Arizona. Here I was trying out a kind of different style of painting, unlike a lot of the palette knife plein air paintings I've been doing lately.

Arizona Clouds, 12 x 16

There's a farm in the country that has some interesting outbuildings. I've stopped to look at it many times. I've done drawings of it. In fact one of those drawings is in my drawing portfolio. One of these days I'll do a plein air painting at the scene although it's one of those places where it would be almost impossible to park, which is why I haven't tried it yet.

Meanwhile I did this studio painting just for fun.

Outbuildings, 12 x 16.

On a recent holiday road trip we ended up staying in The small forgotten town of Vaugn NM. On our way out of town at sunrise we stopped to take a few photos and I snapped a shot of shadows on some old buildings And ended up doing a painting later. Here's the painting.

 AM Shadows, 11 x 16.

Here are five of my paintings currently available at Mary Williams Fine Art

Road to Silverton (After James Reynolds), 20 x 24

  Closing Down, 16 x 20

After the Storm, 16 x 16

Embracing Sky, 18 x 24

Evening Highlights, 16 x 20

Since I had a pile of scraps of canvas and small pieces of gator board I decided to use them up doing a bunch of small color studies. These are 4 x 6 inches. Many were based on color combinations I found on paintings by other people on the internet who had some interesting color schemes, and some are based on older paintings of my own. The goal was to try out some new color relationships, not to come up up with finished works of art. Being so small they were really fast and fun to do.

This is another studio painting adapted from a previous plein air painting, this time with a different composition and shape, but with many of the same elements. I liked the colors From the earlier painting but wanted to change the composition. The first painting was done at the parking area at Peschel Open Space along the Greenway one early winter morning, painted from my car.

Greenway Sunrise, 12 x 12

Here are the new paintings going up for the winter show at the Glass Tipi Gallery in Ward. Some of these are wintery, some not. Most of these are small except for the last one. There are a lot of good paintings up at the Glass Tipi and well worth visiting.

8 x 10

8 x 10

8 x 10

9 x 12

9 x 12

20 x 24

I have a selection of five paintings currently hanging at Fly Away Home in Niwot Colorado. They will be up for the month of December. Stop in if you are in Niwot anytime. Fly Away Home is a great little shop, over near the bookstore and supermarket.

Some of the paintings:

This one, Aspen Light, is sold.

Here's a painting inspired by an earlier plein air painting. Well actually its a combination of two different plein air paintings. I used the enlarged scene of trees at Hamms pond combined with the sky from a summer painting done along a trail near the river. We've been a getting many red/pink  spectacular sunsets in the last couple weeks and that inspired me to do this combo painting.

City at Twilight, 9 x 12

In this painting I was interested in those curvy vents snaking across that roof. It just amazes me how many things are put on commercial roofs, the quantity and variety of vents and AC units and whatever else those boxy things are that get installed on roofs. These boxes and vents make wonderful subjects for lighting studies, much like a lit cube used for still life studies. You can find highlights,  shadows, reflected light, halftones, just about everything. And since they are basically monochromatic they are a good subject for color studies.

Rooftop #7

Here's another painting I recently finished, this one also of a view from a parking garage onto neighboring buildings. Here I was interested in that gash of red brick visible among the grays of the surrounding roofs. I used some glazing in this painting to make the goof more greenish to compliment the red of the brick.

Rooftop#2, 16 x 16

This is a painting copy I did of a James Reynolds painting - well not exactly a copy. I was trying to match the style and the color of a particular painting of his.  But I changed the composition to more closely match a photo I took on the road between Ouray and Silverton CO and I also changed the shape of the painting. They say it's good to copy the paintings of the masters to improve your own work.  One thing I learned, at least in this painting, he used a lot of prussian blue.

From the configuration of the mountains in the distance I am pretty sure he used this particular scene on this particular road for his inspiration. Here's his painting, but I could not find the title although I have it down somewhere. I would love to have his book on landscape painting but it's currently out of print. If anyone wants to buy the painting, I'd be willing to sell it.  His painting is below, mine below that.

Here's the painting I did,  After James Reynolds, 20 x 24

Here's a studio painting I did just for fun. I saw this bank of meters on an apartment near the Denver art museum and took some snapshots on a late winter afternoon, many years ago. I finally got around to doing something with the photo.

Meters, 12 x 16

Here's the photo

This painting is done from an earlier plein air painting from near the Moffat Tunnel. I decided to make a larger version of my earlier painting and make a few changes, including adding more to the scene on the right  side of the painting. As mentioned in an earlier post these are the buildings built for the workers of the Moffat tunnel around a hundred years ago. At that time the railroad tracks ended at the mountain and building the tunnel connected the tracks through to Winter Park and the western side of the mountains. This painting will be in the Governor's Show at the Loveland Museum in Loveland CO, opening on Saturday May 6.

Long View, Short Track, 9 x 12

Here's the original, End of the Line, 8 x 10

This painting is at the Governor's Show in Loveland CO, at the Loveland Museum. It was inspired by the view from a parking garage in Boulder. For a description of the process in making this painting see a previous post of mine.

The show opening for the public will be on Saturday May 6.

Rooftop, 16 x 16

This painting, Fenceline, 20 x 20, Is one of my paintings featured at the Governor's Show in Loveland Colorado at the loveland Museum. The show will open to the public on Saturday May 6.

This painting was inspired by some photos I took one day while out plein air painting in January of last year. It was blowing light snow and I ended up painting in my car. Although this was not the scene I ended up painting that day,  it was the view I had from the car looking in another direction. The view always intrigued me and I finally got to work painting it this winter.

I was driving in the mountains last summer and it was one of those beautiful days with clear blue skies and massive cumulus promising the possibility of rain later in the day. The colors were so brilliant and the sky so blue. This painting was about those clouds hovering over the slopes.

Summer Sky, 16 x 20. This one is at the Governor's Show in Loveland Colorado opening on Saturday May 6, at the Loveland Museum.

After looking at this for a couple months I've revised it. Here's Foothhills Storm, 16 x 20,

  with its new revisions. I added more detail in front and also the turn sign, felt it needed more focus.

Here's a story of how and why I ended up making a model or maquette for one of my paintings. This scene I was painting was one I saw from the top of a parking garage. The various shapes and shadows of the vents, ac units and pipes appealed to me and I thought it might make an interesting painting. 

I started out working from a photo I took at the time, making a b/w print of the photo to figure out my values with a medium gray marker and a dark marker. It was easier to work with a photo due to the perspective issues, rather than redrawing the whole thing,

and using the markers to map out a value range. 

Then I made a preliminary sketch using these three values to try to figure out my composition. I decided I didn't want much of the right side of the roof, and eventually decided on a square composition. After looking at the sketch I decided to eliminate that  front boxy unit.

The next step was making a small color sketch to figure out my color scheme, which I did with oil paint on a piece of Carton board.

After starting the actual painting, I realized I needed to change the composition to break up some of that plain gray roof area by adding something to the lower right and this meant inventing a boxy object to put in. I needed a color accent and a slight change to the composition and adding this item would solve the problem. Since this new box didn't exist in the original photo and it's shadow would fall on the tented section of the roof I needed to figure out how the shadow would lay. It wasn't something like a tree shadow that I could just fake so this is where the maquette comes in. I made a model of the front portion of the roof.  If I could duplicate the original shadows on part of the original roof then the shadow of the invented section would be accurate.  Here's a photo of the model and how it was lit ( with a flashlight).

Finally here's the final painting, Rooftops, 16 x 16.  This painting will go in the Governor's Show in Loveland in late April.

I woke up the other day before sunrise and didn't feel sleepy anymore so got up and painted the sunrise out my studio window. The sun comes up so late these days in winter. The "land" portion of the landscape is the street behind our place populated with ordinary houses so not too interesting, but there is a good view of the eastern sky. It was kind of an ordinary sunrise, not one of those spectacular ones that everybody likes to take photos of.

 Morning View, 8 x 10

Lafayette CO has an exhibit planned to feature art of scenes from Waneka Lake, which is a park area in the town. Here are a couple of the paintings I did of Waneka Lake, in gouache. One is of the old granary and the other a scene of the park buildings as they look from  across the lake. Both are quite small, around 6 " wide.  Gouache is a lot of fun to work with and great for doing small studies while planning larger paintings. It's almost a cross between watercolor technique and oil technique as you can go from dark to light and can paint over previous passages, and wipe things off with water.

Open Studios is sponsoring a new holiday gallery open from now till December 31 in the old historic Feed and Grain building in Niwot CO. The gallery will be open from Thursday through Sunday until December 31 from noon to 6 PM. 

I have a selection of items on sale at the gallery so stop by if you are in the area. 

This coming Friday night is Niwot's Enchanted Evening, a big holiday celebration from 6-9 . See their website . For all the activities, including Santa arriving on a sleigh, community tree lighting and holiday carols. Should be a fun night.

Here's a painting I did a few years ago and still have. There was always something about it that bothered me. I worked on this in a few places and like it much better now so here it is again.

Winter Light, 20 x 24

This is a studio painting I have been working on and finally finished. The scene is a road going from Boulder to Longmont that I often travel on, and on this particular evening the traffic was low and the clouds were beautiful. Here's my version.

Slow Night on the Diagonal, 16 x 20.

Here's a large painting I have been working on in the studio, sort of experimental. It is based on a photo I took at the top of the mountains along Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain Park.  The underlying composition is based on a spiral.

Embracing Sky, 20 x 24

Coming up this Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 5PM  at 4949 N. Broadway, Boulder CO, studio #280 on the second floor.  Hope to see you there. Here are a few of the paintings on display.

The Studio Tour started today and will continue tomorrow from noon to 5. Here's one of the gouache paintings I had available at the tour.  I did this one last week on a rainy morning. It was too wet to paint outside so I worked on it inside the car. It's getting to be that time of year where outdoor painting isn't always ideal, or even possible where rain and water media are concerned.

A rainy view looking east toward Union Reservoir:

  Rainy Day, 7 x 9 approx., sold today.

Stop by if you're in the neighborhood for the tour this Sunday or Oct 15 and 16. Address here

 The Boulder Studio Tour preview show opens tonight at the Boulder Museum, 2206 Broadway in Boulder,  Friday September 30th from 5:30 to 8 PM  and features work from every person on the tour. Here's a chance to see a sample of everyone's art and plan which studios you'd like to visit.  Hope to see you there. Should be a great show.

Here's a piece I'll have on display during the tour and used in the brochure map.

After the Rain, 16 x 16.

Save a place in your schedule for the Boulder Studio Tour preview show which will be up until October 17th.  The Boulder Studio Tour will be hosting the show at the Boulder Museum, 2206 Broadway in Boulder. The opening will be on Friday September 30th from 5:30 to 8 PM featuring work from every person on the tour. Here's a chance to see a sample of everyone's work and plan which studios you'd like to visit.  Hope to see you there. Should be a great show.

My painting is Season's End, 22 x 28.

The Boulder Studio Tour will start this weekend and I will be participating on the weekends of October 1-2 and 15-16.

I will be sharing the studio of Jessica Lanan, a book illustrator and watercolorist. Check out here website. Her studio is in North Boulder.

4949 N Broadway

Boulder 80304

go in door 190, proceed upstairs to studio 280

12 pm to 5 pm

Oct 1-2, Oct 15-16.

A sample of Jessica's work:

This is a studio painting done from a plein air painting I did earlier in May. I wanted to change the colors and the layout a bit and explore the patterns of the foliage. Here are the new version and the original version.

Ridgeline View, 12 x 16

Here's the original, Foothills Trail 8 x 10

Around here there is not a lot of water, it basically being a high desert.   So even though we do have the St. Vrain River coming down out of the mountains it doesn't carry a lot of water and gets pretty low in the dry months. We don't have small streams and springs and brooks. Everything is dry except for the river. And so agriculture here depends on irrigation. A hundred years ago early farmers dug irrigation ditches from the river to their fields. There's a whole network of irrigation ditches feeding into field all over the front range.  Often in the countryside the only place other than someone's front yard that has trees is the place where a ditch runs. They all have names and are regulated by water companies. The one closest to us is called the Oligarchy Ditch. One has to own water shares in the ditch to use any of the water running past. And so, when the artist goes out looking for a nice shady stream to do a painting, what he(she) ends up with is an irrigation ditch. I've become interested in these ditches and the sluice gates set up along them. 

Here's my latest painting of one of these ditches and the trees along it.

Season's End, 28 x 22

Color can give a whole different feel to a painting and using a limited palette can be a great exercise in color experimentation.  After reading from Joe Pototschnik's book Limited Palette, Unlimited Color  I've been trying various color palette ideas.

One of his suggestions to try is what he calls using a Primary Dominant palette, a red, yellow or blue dominant palette. For instance a red dominant palette would include blue violet, violet, red violet, red, red orange, orange, and yellow orange. You would only be able to mix colors from that group of colors. I decided to try what I called a green dominant palette, not a primary set but anyway I went ahead with it. My colors ranged from yellow orange, yellow, yellow green, green, green blue, blue, blue violet. Because I was not using this secondary based palette I had no reds. I chose to try a scene from an overcast day and used this palette to turn it into an early morning scene. Using a different palette can change the mood of scene making it look like a different time of the day or night.

Here's a section of the color wheel I picked. and below is the painting I did, Crane Sunrise, 12 x 24

Original photo.

Here's the original painting I posted a while ago that I did on a snow-flurried morning. I felt it had some possibilities for making a larger painting and I ended up making a 16 x 20 painting using the sketch and photos I took at the scene. The color is changed somewhat from the original plein air.  I wanted to get a more blue look to the scene. It's a challenge to make a larger painting from a plein air sketch, and a skill that I am trying to learn.

This is the original plein air painting Snowy Fields, 8 x 10.

Here's the larger painting, Snow in the Air, 16 x 20.