Art Journal

Here's a quick little plein air I did at Rocky Mountain Park last week. We went up for the day, taking advantage of the off season to go out the Bear Lake Road and see some of the places we haven't been able to get to for a while. I ended  painting this near Moraine Park.

Winter Stream, 8 x 10

Here's a scene from the trail head where I painted last Thursday. The hills in the south were still covered with a lot of snow so it made a nice contrast with the blue sky and the darks of the foreground.

Bobolink Trailhead, 8 x 10

Here's a small painting done near the Greenway one afternoon at a parking area looking off to the west on a very warm March day.

The mountains in the background were reduced to a haze.

A Distant View, 8 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.

I did this painting mostly with a palette knife. The challenge with this scene was the problem we are always faced with this time of year. Everything is rather colorless, especially with no snow on the ground. So I wanted to find all the nuances in the color and try to accentuate them to get some color interest into the painting.

Winter Grays, 8 x 10

The rainy weather we got one day last week is so unusual for February  and was a real incentive to go out and paint - we're so used to having sunny bright mornings winter and summer. I know that sounds pretty unappreciative but it's nice to have some different weather effects to work with. It was coming down pretty steadily though, so I opted to paint inside the car, along Union Reservoir. There was a patch of clear sky to the south which drew me to this view. There's not a lot of color out there this time of year. Everything is so drab.

 Rain at Union, 9 x 12