Art Journal

Another May painting. It was a very busy Sunday and everyone was out, probably tired of staying home and social distancing. The weather looked great at first. Roads in the mountains were packed with cars, every pullout along the road to Ward was loaded with cars. The quiet place I had planned to paint was full of picnic goers and sunbathers. I ended up driving back down the canyon road and stopped at Pella Crossing just as the weather started to cloud over. I didn't have time to paint for long and finished this study up pretty quickly. I wonder how all those people out on the canyon road fared with the rain which I am sure hit them pretty hard. We had a fairly good rainstorm out of it.

This painting was also limited palette, ult.B, aliz. perm, and naples Y.

Before the Storm, 9 x 12.

There are beaver ponds along a nearby mountain road with a couple pull-off areas, and I decided to go there and paint one Saturday, not sure what exactly I was after except being interested in the reflections and the trees on the water. This one was experimental - I was trying out a limited palette of alizarin permanent, ultramarine blue and naples yellow and white of course. I wasn't trying to get the exact colors of the scene but was going for more of the range of colors possible with my palette choice. It was fun to do and the result is more abstract than a literal realistic painting of the scene would have been.

Beaver Pond, 12 x 9

Back in the mountains again, late May, things are starting to green up. I saw this hillside with pines and aspens set against a blue sky with a few white clouds. This was originally  larger but I cropped it down to the part I was really interested in - the trees against the sky.

Spring Hillside, 8 x 8

This one was from later in May. We took a scouting trip up to the mountains again, me hoping to find an interesting place to paint, he to find an interesting place to go biking along back roads.  I found a very interesting boggy area with an uphill aspen patch that had recently melted off from the snow. There was every shade of pale green to beige to tan in the grasses recently released from their snow covering, and pale green and tan tree bark as well so I decided to go with that and make a sort of monochromatic painting and see how it turned out. Two large dead trees were leading in to the small grove of aspen. Had fun doing this one.

The Way In, 11 x 14

On a day trip to the mountains in mid-May I came across a couple beaver ponds flooded over from the spring melt and particularly liked the light and reflections on this pond. Snow banks were still hiding out in the woods behind the pond. In the mountains the ground was just recently exposed to the sun again and nothing was really starting to grow yet. There were a lot of interesting warm colors in the woods, reflections and trees.  Reawakening, 8 x 10.

The St. Vrain River has a few back channels and and I set up along one of them to paint. This was in Sandstone Ranch park near the bike path bridge. I have always liked the look of this riverbank and painted it a few other times at different times of day and year, different angles and so forth.  It always changes too, at the whims of the eater and currents.  Things were definitely looking spring-like around the river when I painted this one. I had a very pleasant morning painting away, wearing my mask, with bikers whizzing behind me on occasion. 

Update - this one just won 2nd place in the PAPNM signs of spring online contest.

Meander, 9 x 12.

Another painting from May.  This time it was so rainy I painted inside the car. The rain was coming down steadily and I had to keep running the windshield wipers occasionally to see my scene. It's a little awkward in the car ( I have a small car) but doable. I have the mini fly-on-the-wall palette from Joshua Been. The panel holder upright can be strapped to the steering wheel with twisty ties.  It isn't the most comfy setup but works fine. It comes in very handy for super rainy days and ultra cold or windy days.  Mostly I just use it in the winter.

This time I was at Pella Crossing. Pella has several lakes and ponds and is a good place to paint reflections if you're into that.  It's a nice place at dawn and dusk. Also a good place to see great blue herons. In early spring you can see the herons gathering at the nests high in the trees, before the foliage fills in and hides it all.

Rainy Morning, 8 x 10

Here is a plein air painting from May - I've really gotten behind on this blog but I will really try to catch up. Now that the weather is nicer I've been going out a lot more to paint and neglecting the website.

This painting is from Sawhill Ponds. Sawhill Ponds is a collection of ponds and reservoirs near Boulder.  In this painting I was trying to capture the greens of early spring. Green is always a problem. You don't want to get everything too bright green in the painting as it seems to kill the picture, but instead want to look for all the other colors, warm and cool in the trees and grasses.

The pond where I set up had an interesting edge of chartreuse-colored algae, along with a lot of different greens in the newly budding trees. It only lasts this way for a week or two before the colors change for a more mature green. Spring at Sawhill, 9 x 12.