Zion Workshop

This is one of our painting days alongside the Virgin River in Zion Nat'l Park. The group to the left is just part of our group, we were spread out over a larger area of the river on this day. I was standing on a bridge to take this photo. Wonderful weather and painting, all-in-all a very successful workshop experience.

Zion Day Two

This is the painting I did while sitting next to the Virgin River in Zion Nat'l Park today. After attending four workshops with Carl Purcell, I feel I am finally starting to "get it", and like the paintings I am doing while here.

Better weather today; pleasant, sunny and warm.

Zion Workshop - Day One

This is my painting from Day One here at the Carl Purcell workshop. It ended up being a miserably rainy, cold day;but I got a good start on this painting before I gave up, went back to the motorhome, put my iPod on Mozart, and finished it in comfort. So far, I think it is my best workshop painting ever, I get so intimidated when at these things that I forget everything I ever knew about painting. But, I am getting better at it and the results are a painting that I can like better.

More tomorrow.

More photos

Now that I can access the user portion of my blog I am going to try to catch up with some more photos.

The sand dunes photo is in Death Valley and was taken shortly after sunrise (yes, we got up REALLY early and were treated to wonderful colors as we traveled through the park to get to the sand dunes. I used my digital zoom and multiplier and was quite far away from the dunes, but with my braces and sore feet didn't want to traverse the dunes to get a good shot. The dunes photos with the multiplier lens makes it look like I had hiked out close to the dunes.

The pool with algae was at the Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge. This is one of the few places on the planet where the Pupfish have endured, though they are on the protected, almost extinct list. They are only about 1-1 1/2 inches in length and an almost electric blue color, darting among the algae. The pools are spring fed and crystal clear. The reason the pool looks a bit murky in this photo is that my camera was focusing on the fish and blurred the background, plus it was a deep pool with clear water on top. Really was a surprise to see these pools amidst the desolate landscape surrounding Death Valley.

The third photo of the rock shows just a few of the contrasts in rock colors in DV. It was unbelievable how many colors there were at different times of the day. This really is a surprising place to visit.

Now, on to Zion!

Death Valley

I have been unable to submit anything to my blog since we left on our trip since Internet Explorer would not allow that. Tom has Mozilla Foxfire on his laptop so we tried it through that and it worked. These are two of the many photos I have taken in Death Valley and surrounding areas in the past week. Tomorrow morning we leave for Zion and my Carl Purcell workshop there.

We're having a fun and relaxing time, enjoying our first road trip in over three months. Death Valley is such an interesting place. We have been there during sunrise, sunset and sundown and all the times in between. The colors of the rocks change magically according to the time of the day. The photo of the rocks is at Artist's Palette, which is aptly name due to the different rock colors. The other photo is of a sundown trip we took through the park.

More later as I process more photos.

Arts and Craft Fair, March 3

A fellow art club member stopped by my table and took my photo at a recent art sale. My next sale will be April 7 & 8 at the Sun City Grand Art Club.

Love this Grandma stuff!

No artwork to show today, just a quick photo to show my favorite baby...she is here for a short visit (she brought her parents, too) and I am loving getting to play with her. She still doesn't allow anyone but Mommy and Daddy to hold her, but she lets Grandma play with her and she gives good kisses! She is a real cutie now at 12 months, runs all over the place.

Petroglyph tiles

These are petroglyph "tiles", actually 4x4 and 5x7 pieces of textured clayboard for watercolor that I was asked about, so I will submit them here. I paint the background rock colors (usually three glazes) and then, when the last glaze is dry, I lift out the petroglyph shapes. I use any of my hundreds of photos I have of these things and try to stay as accurate as possible to the figures and shapes carved out of stone as they were done by the Ancients. I then "enhance" them a bit with some added black lines here and there, spray them with clayboard fixative and put them on the appropriate size display easel or table stand. I sell quite a few of them, stand included, and they have become quite popular. I thought originally I would mostly make the 4x4's, but people at my sales have been asking for specific figures to be done on 5x7's and 8x10's. These could also be framed, without glass, since they are sealed but I think they are nice to sit on a shelf or table since everyone is so limited on wall space for art, it seems. Someone asked me about using the smallest ones as coasters and since they are sealed that might work. However, I would not guarantee that since I haven't tried it and my original intent in creating them was for display.

Go Diamondbacks

This little angel will be here until Monday. Just look at all that red hair that Aubrey is growing, finally! She has the stance, though, of a sumo wrestler in pink. They are due to arrive tomorrow afternoon....yea!

We leave for a two-week trip next week, I will try to enter scenes from our stops along the way, including my workshop with Carl Purcell in Zion. Since I switched my blog over to the "new" blogger, hopefully I can enter things from remote computers more easily than before.