Loop 303 Finished

 While we were gone for a month, the DOT guys finished the northern end of Loop 303, which makes a bypass through the city to connect I-10 to I-17. This takes you through the desert in places we have not seen, which surprised us as we were driving on the other side of the mountains and hills we had only seen from one side.

This part of the desert was surprisingly green for this time of the year. Most of what we see is summer brown on the desert.

One view that impressed me, and which I failed to adequately show in this photo, is the amount of horizontal planes reaching to infinity with these mountains. Living on the valley's desert floor, it always amazes me to see these mountains this way.

Home at Last!

Finally, our son and DIL were able to bring little Zane home from the hospital this afternoon. Also this was Big Sister Aubrey's first time to see her baby brother in person and to hold him as she was not allowed near the NICU.

She looks very pleased, however Zane is very non-committal at this point! Happy, happy day indeed!

Better Photo

I have been waiting to update Zane's first photo here until there were no more tubes and his little eyes were open, and here it is! Patrick had just fed him a lot of milk and he said Zane looked like he was so full...milk drunk!

If all continues to go well, he can go home Wednesday afternoon...Hallelujuh! What a cutie!

Zane Patrick

 I wish to announce the arrival of our new grandchild, Zane Patrick, to our family. Unfortunately, he aspirated meconium into his lungs at birth (a fairly common complication of birth) and has to be in the NICU for at least ten days while they treat the pneumonia and help his lungs to heal, but we are hopeful that there will be no further complications.

I like the name they chose! I can now say I have grandchildren!

Silverton to Ouray

 One day while in Chama, we drove the long trip to Silverton, CO. We had lunch at the Silverton Brewery, where in addition to a good lunch I had a glass of Bear Ass Brown Ale, which was yummy.

This old truck was in front of the pub and many people were posing in front of it for photos.

 After lunch we drove from Silverton almost all of the way to Ouray, a mountain mining town. The evidence of minerals changed as we climbed up toward Ouray. Look at these colors!

 One of the stunning views, along with the snows that were still prevalent at the 10,000 foot elevation.

This is a mining building that I recognized immediately from a photo a friend shot a few years ago and gave me permission to paint. Now, I was seeing it and photographing it myself.

 This is a vista that I brought back to the motorhome and started painting it. You will sorta/kinda recognize this from my version of it in a previous post here. I still have a few more things to do with the painting since I am home now.

This is another of the photos I took with a thought to paint it. Our project for the month of July at the Watercolor Workshop online site is shadows. When I was reviewing this I knew I had to give this one a try for the project painting.

Foxes Revisited Again This Year

 I will begin adding a few photos from our month in Chama, NM here on the blog since we have returned home. For security reasons, I decided not to turn this blog into a travelog this trip and let everyone online know our house was not occupied for a month! So, this will be a retrospective of some of what we saw.

We had a very relaxing trip, preferring this time to not scour the countryside every day while there, mainly because we wanted to relax and we had already seen everything in all four directions on our previous trips to this area.

While doing laundry, I was overlooking the neighbor's property which had a large pile of rubbish, mainly fallen timber, but with some junk interwoven. In this enormous pile was a family of foxes, a mama and three babies.

I grabbed my camera and telephoto lens and started snapping multiple photos. This is the mama, striding from our RV park meadow to skirt around to the neighboring property to take food to her youngsters.

She arrived onto the woodpile and dropped some food off for her babies. She was very warily watching me as I kept recording her movements and probably thought I posed a danger to her babies. Not so...I only shoot with my camera, Mama !

 This is my fav photo of the bunch...look at that little baby peeking out in the center of the photo!

The babies were more of a brown than the adult mother, I guess that is normal. I know less than nothing about foxes, other than I love watching them and photographing them.

Last SWAP Painting

I have been including the paintings I have received from the SWAP (Sharing With Artist Partners) group online and here is the latest one. My SWAP partner was Brenda Knoll and she sent this cutie-pie bluebird to me. Sadly, this will be our last swap, but I have amassed quite the gallery of lovely paintings from all over the world through the years I have belonged to this group and I treasure them all, as well as their artists as friends.

Silverton to Ouray - WIP 2

I worked on this again yesterday, getting it to the point where I have to decide what HAS to be done and what would just be considered "fiddling". I want to push the mountain farther back; it, in real life, is too demanding of attention to be so far back there. I also need to add some modeling to the pine trees in the foreground. But, all-in-all I still am liking this one.

Silverton to Ouray

I have started another painting, this time from a photo I took of the scene from the 550 highway (Million Dollar Highway) that connects Silverton, CO to Ouray, CO. I loved the view with the mountains behind and the alpine valley below. There is still masking fluid on the mountains to be removed, so will do that and fine-tune that area next. So far, so good.

Great Horned Owl - Reprocessed

I reprocessed this photo to more closely match the painting colors. I don't know why it was recorded as being such a cold tone before; the painting is done in warm colors, except for the shadows for contrast.

Great Horned Owls - final

I have decided to quit picking on these poor owls and call this one finished. It has been enjoyable working on them but I am ready to go forth and do something else.

If anyone  sees anything glaringly wrong with this let me know and I will consider making the changes. I'll submit it for critique, also, at the WcW, but for now it is done.

PS...Now that I see this photo of the painting online, I see that it is grayer than the actual painting. I will try again to photograph it in different light.

Great Horned Owls WIP 2

Trying once again here to upload this so the poor owls are not standing on their heads!

I will be adding more glazes of color as I go on with this and, hopefully, refining the edges here need be and then on to the owls. Baby horned owls are without their tufts and they look so adorable, instead of intense as their parents.

Great Horned Owls

This is the underpainting of a photo provided, once again, by my friend Roch Hart of NM Jeep Tours. I am trying to upload the photo showing my next phase of the first glazes and it keeps uploading upside down! I will have to see what is going on but I have worked on this past the underpainting. Grrrr!

Mountain Cascade

After working on this larger painting for a month of Thursday afternoons, I am nearing the finish line. I would appreciate another set of eyes for one question. I chose to not detail the tall pines behind the focal point tree, choosing to leave them dark, almost in silhouette. I felt this set them back nicely. As I worked forward I did more detail on those pines but chose to go lighter with the values in the foreground. I know this is counter to the atmospheric perspective rules but I did it anyway. Do you think it works in reverse?

This painting is on a piece of 16 x 28 Yupo paper. It is really fun to work large on Yupo, just throw lots of paint on there!

Another Photo-less Post

The reason this is photo-less is I was lost in the moment of serendipity and didn't grab my camera. I was at the computer and kept hearing this metallic ding-ding sound. I knew there were quail out on our patio and I began hearing a different quail noise, so went to investigate. We have a vault-type meat smoker on the patio, all of it being made of stainless steel. A male quail had seen his own reflection in one of the legs of this smoker and thought it was an interloper, so he was madly pecking at the smoker leg and the interloper reflection was mimicking his moves (of course) and he was getting more and more upset and pecking faster and faster. He would dart to the side and the reflection would do the same and he was scurrying every which-way trying to vanquish his foe. It was hysterical to see.

And what do you think his girlfriend was doing during all of this battle for her affection? Just prancing around, totally unaffected by the battle.

Pardon me for this bit of fluff today, but I thought it amusing and worth sharing. Next time, I will try to take a photo if I can, but I have never seen this scene playing out and may never see it again.

For Our Less Fortunate Friends

No photos, no paintings, just thoughts for this morning. For my readers who have survived the terrible destruction for the past few weeks wherever you are, I am praying for you and those who have lost everything. I feel so very unworthy for complaining as the desert starts its inexorable heat-up because I know what is coming and dread it. But, now I know I have something very petty to complain about in the face of those who have lost so many and so much. I don't know if it is more stressful to watch the flood waters coming assuredly your way and know that it will soon engulf all you have worked for or more stressful to not know when a killer tornado is going to come. Either way, I feel for all who are going through such stress and will continue to pray for your comfort and safety.

We Have Returned!

 We had a five-night motorhome trip, the first one since our miserable year of poor health has not allowed us to travel. All went well, although after unpacking the motorhome we are very tired today, with lots more left to do! It was fun while it lasted, though!

We traveled to the bottom of the Grand Canyon through the road at the west entrance, this was our second time to do this. Fortunately this time we were there at the right time to see all of the wild flowers blooming. There were these beaver tail cactus, ocotillo, brittle bush, Indian paintbrush, desert marigolds, globe mallows...all blooming in profusion. There were parts of the area that had so many octotillo in bloom that it looked like a forest of them, all of them with their red flags waving.

When we were almost at the Colorado River, we were driving through a stream bed. There was runoff coming downhill from all directions, forming Diamond Creek which empties into the river at the base of the canyon. Here is a small cascade we saw. Being a desert native, I am always captivated by rushing water of any kind!

 We drove to the Hoover Dam, as neither of us has seen it. I climbed to the Memorial Plaza to cross the pedestrian bridge alongside the big bridge to see the back side of the dam. It is a long way down to the bottom!

Here is the memorial bridge, named in memory of Pat Tillman and one other person (I am chagrined to think I didn't write down the other person's name and now cannot remember it!). This is a very long span, completed last year.

Here is one of the most Grand Canyon-esque views as we neared the canyon. Please note the blooming octotillo at the left, in the foreground. This is where the journey got so much more picturesque. We were driving at the bases of these buttes at this point.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

A happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone who celebrates it. Living so close to the Mexican border for most of my life I have come to realize that this is as important to our culture as St. Patrick's Day is back East. And I'm half Irish!

We plan on celebrating safely at home with something Mexican tonight for dinner, although I wish I had bought Cerveza beer to go with it! If you go out, don't drink too much and....Vayan con Dios!

Emerging Flowers Again

Had to share these again as they are opening more. I love these cannas and will have to plant more. I also love the fact that the rabbits appear to not like eating cannas, a big plus around here!

The prickly pear cactus got more than the normal amount of rain this Winter so they are producing more flowers and the pads are fatter this year.

Emerging Flowers

 This is an emerging canna flower. It is the first bloom of the season. We had a hard freeze once this Winter that caused me to cut back half the plant so I was worried that it may not bloom again. But, it is going to! I'll take more photos as this opens more.

These are just a few of the prickly pear blooms this year. I love how artistic Mother Nature is in providing yellow flowers on purple-tinged pads...complementary colors!

Anasazi Fantsy on Yupo - Final

I finished this WIP this afternoon while at the Art Club. I just let it speak to me until I decided enough! I have scrubbed it out in places, lifted in places, highlighted in places and air brushed it in places...all in watercolor. Enough! I do like the look of it and, especially, that it was done without reference photo and drawing beforehand.

So, without further ado, here it is.....

Dreadful Drake - One Last Time

Thanks to good suggestions for finishing this from my local group and the online WcW group, I have finished this painting. I added more color to the drake so it would be more obvious that the goose/girlfriend was in front of him and it wasn't just one oddly-shaped bird. I like it better now, too.

Yupo Fantasy - WIP

Inspired by some of the latest paintings by Barbara Sailor, I decided that yesterday afternoon was the time to play with Yupo again. I had such a good time playing with this stuff, as usual. I started with a vague idea to create the upper landscape with buttes and then using strata format to create whatever was below. When I say whatever, I really mean whatever since I had no idea what it was going to do and just went in with splashing paint and let 'er rip. I began to see something different emerge, so went with cliff dwellings in the mid ground and a stylized landscape in the foreground. I still have quite a bit I want to do with this, including setting back some of the dwellings and changing their sizes to be less uniform (right now they remind me of a mouthful of teeth!). I also have to resolve that unfortunate shape in the upper right quadrant and make it into something more believable than it is now. I have in mind what I will do up there but we will see if the paint and brush really wants me to do what I am thinking. That's the beauty and the curse of Yupo!

Dreadful Drake - Final

Here is what I hope will be the final WIP of this. I am pleased with everything but the trees and wish I had not put so much detail in them with the underpainting. I suppose a lesson learned is a good way to look at it, but it still isn't great to feel I should have known better.

I like the water and foreground, though, much better than the rendition I did last year of this scene. Now, on to my next painting adventure/victim.

Desert Jaunt

We have been threatening to go out for a day of enjoying the wildflowers and the desert for about a month now, but with my healing broken leg, and the fact that we both have had bad colds have forced us to remain home. It would have been more "convenient" for both of us to be sick at the same time, but I was sick for an entire week and then Tom caught my cold and that put us another week and a half into feeling like we couldn't make plans to do this. Yesterday, we decided to just go and get out for just an hour or so and get out of the house together for that long at least.

Since we live on the desert, it doesn't take that long to get out among the Saguaros, and we enjoyed it. Alas, we had missed whatever wildflowers were there earlier, but the cholla were certainly abundant and very plump at this time. Their soft fuzziness is extremely deceptive, I have come into contact with this soft fuzziness twice in my life and regretted it mightily both times!

Dreadful Drake - WIP 3

I have worked on this for about an hour and will stop now and let it dry completely before anything more. I have lifted out all the water surface textures and will next start the geese. Time to stop before I wish I had!

PS...After seeing this online for a few times, I am thinking I will texture those tree trunks better before starting on the geese. They are just too smooth. It is so helpful for me to see this online instead of in real life since that makes me a critique-er instead of the artist as I am viewing it as you all are.  Interesting phenomenon!

Dreadful Drake - WIP 2

I am renaming this painting, for the time being, to Dreadful Drake since I finally had to resort to using my telephoto lens to get a photo of him and his girlfriend. He remained ever-vigilant about me and made menacing steps toward me at every chance. At any rate, this is the second WIP  photo I have taken after the underpainting posted here earlier.

There is still much to do with this in glazing on deeper colors in the water as well as more detail work in the trees. I will wait until finished with the geese before worrying about the foreground grasses. I just wanted to lay in some color, especially around her feet so I can get those buried as they were in the photo.

I plan on working on this some more this afternoon and see how far I can get with it.

Wolf Creek Pass Study

This is a small study I did as a project painting for the Watercolor Workshop. this month one of the projects was to paint a painting with mostly greens and use only mixed greens, no tube greens allowed. For this painting I chose ultramarine blue and cad yellow for the greens. For the rocks I used quin burnt orange and ultramarine blue.

I chose to do this on Yupo since I want to do a full sheet Yupo painting of this scene, but wanted to try a few things out before I start the larger painting. I like some of the textures I got in this, but will keep searching and experimenting with the larger painting textures. I always learn so much if I stop and do a study first, but rarely take the time to do that.

This is a photo taken on one of our trips up Wolf Creek Pass when we stayed in Chama, NM two years ago.

Got my SWAP painting.....

Three to four times a year the SWAP (Sharing With Artists Partners) group has their painting swaps. Lisa Voight from Pennsylvania was my partner this time and I just received her painting of a bouquet of eastern wildflowers from her.

Cheerful painting to be received right at the time of the first full day of Spring, huh?

Watchful Drake Revisited

Those of you who follow this blog and the Watercolor Workshop online will recognize this subject from when I tried to paint it last year. Despite all the wonderful advice I received to make it better, I never felt I resolved the problems enough so scrapped it. I am going to give it another try, only this time paying more attention to the composition and try an underpainting first.

I'll post progress I make as I make it, hopefully will work on this sometime this week.

Self Portrait by an Artist

Just got a call from my granddaughter, Aubrey. She told me she had painted a painting for me of herself. She said she had used one of the brushes I sent her for her birthday to paint this painting.

Our son told me he wasn't even allowed to look at the painting until she was done with it and they were sending it to me. Please note the board with her other artwork on it at her side. She really does enjoy painting and is becoming quite the prolific artist!

Grandma is lovin' this!

Rose Succulent

I finished this painting this morning. Once it was finished, THEN I noticed a few hard edges in the shadows that I don't like but they were done in acrylic ink so there you go...soften the edges in the underpainting before adding the color glazes Susan!

I do like the moonlit glow of the darker colors of this, though. I wonder if I will ever learn enough about this stuff to completely like a painting I have done and not see the oops areas? I guess most artists are still on a learning/evolving path no matter how good they are, that's my story and I'm stickin' with it.

Succulent Rose Grisaille

This grisaille underpainting is from a reference photo provided by the Watercolor Workshop as one of our monthly projects. I told the group when I submitted last month's project painting (the rose in blue vase below) that I had used a purple grisaille-type underpainting to set my values and they expressed interest in that process. So, I remembered to take a photo of the finished underpainting before I started adding the color.

I am glazing on blue-green colors and will post when I have finished. I have three glazes on so far and will probably only add a few more to see what shades of blue green I end up with. As I have added the glazes, some of the hard edges seen here have softened quite a bit, and when I am finished I hope to have something that looks more like the soft-edged succulent rose than a typical thin-edged rose as this appears here in the underpainting.

In the next few days I hope to finish this and post the resulting painting. then, on to the second project for this month!

Vicki's Roses

This is my submission for the Watercolor Workshop project for February where we all paint from one photo. The photo was provided by Vicki Greene and the roses are from her garden. I just loved the vase as it reminded me of the paint color, Prussian Blue, which is a fav of mine. I used my evolving process of doing an underpainting first, using the grisaille method of painting with gray to set the mid tone and darkest shadows first, only I used purple acrylic ink for this as it doesn't lift when glazing over it with watercolor.

I didn't use any masking in this, but set the doily hole edges with the ink first to mark where the holes were and painted them later with the table color. I hope this was not a heritage piece crocheted by one of Vicki's ancestors as I fear I changed the pattern a bit in my rendition!

This was a fun one to do and I so enjoyed getting to paint two paintings this month. This wheelchair and walker business is becoming a real drag, but I am half-way through it all and will continue to take care so as not to re-injure myself and make it take longer to heal. I am also trying to be patient with it all since I feel so small and unworthy in complaining about my situation when I know there is a date I can get up out of this chair...so many others will not be able to do that and I am very empathetic for their struggles.

Davi's Mama - WIP 3

I have this painting to this point, and, after seeing it on the computer monitor I see a few things I need to address. It is always so much more clear to see problems on the PC than in person, holding the painting! I need to reshape her eyes, especially her right eye, with the lower lid scrunching up over the right side of the eyeball more. I also need to add a few more darks to the hair sections.

I will submit this for critique to the WcW group, consider any suggestions here, and take care of what I see myself. Then, this should be done. For once I managed to get the mouth right and she does look like a toothless woman, which was one of the reasons I wanted to paint her photo. My other goal was to get the facial contours to suggest all the wrinkles, instead of just having the darker lines to suggest them. I am pleased so far with that, and with just a little further tweaking I will be finished with that. Another thing I like about this was I managed to show the kindness in this lady's eyes, and I don't want to do anything to detract from that, but I do need to fix that right eye and work on the left one a bit more, too, to make them correct.

Anyone see anything other than what was mentioned above that I need to do with this?

Update

Just a short note here to let you all know I have not limped off into infinity...yet! I did see the orthopedist, who assured me my fracture was a simple one which means it was not displaced and should heal 100 percent...this was good news! He placed my leg in a long-leg immobilizer, which means I can take it off for showers and bedtime if I am careful. After wearing this for a week, I can tell it is working since my leg doesn't feel very good without it, kinda scary even.I am using a walker to do the prescribed partial weightbearing and that is going well.

Tom helped get me and my stuff into the art club Thursday afternoon, which was so enjoyable after not painting for two weeks. I have finished (I think, will await critiques) Davi's Mama, but cannot submit for critiques or here until I can go outside and get a good photo of her to show. I can probably do that today, but we are having two days of dark clouds and rain showers here so I will have to wait for the first sunny days. Be assured I am not complaining about the clouds and rain; living on the desert we always welcome the rain since we get so little of it.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend....

Now I've gone and dunnit!

I'm not sure how much blogging, painting or jewelry-making I will be doing anytime soon as I fell at home Thursday night and cracked the upper part of my lower leg bone where it joins under the knee cap. So, I am wheelchair-bound and awaiting a visit (hopefully early next week) to the orthopedist to see what he wants to do with me. I am in a temporary full leg cast, non-weightbearing and will hope he gives me a brace instead of a cast, but we will see.

What a revolting development! Thankfully, my Tom is far enough along in his recovery that he can become my caregiver and I will become the patient. WE ARE TEAM!

I am hoping to devise a way, once this pain eases a bit, to do some more painting on Davi's Mama but will wait to see what the orthopedist says about further immobilization. Good grief!

Davi's Mama - WIP 4

Here I have darkened some of the darkest values...still not there yet, but trying to go slowly so as not to muddy her up too much. As I work with her, I am reminded of the character Yoda from Star Wars and hope to not venture too far into that realm. But, with her squinting eyes, no teeth and wrinkles I am trying to make her less like him and more like the photo I have of herself.

I have one more photo of the WIP 5 but have to wait until after this weekend to show that and to try to work on her a bit more. This is such a busy week with appointments and art stuff for various organizations that she will have to sit and marinate for awhile before adding more life to her. Her hair needs to be darker in areas as well as her shirt folds more distinct, etc....But, so far I am sticking to my reasons for wanting to paint her interesting visage, and am pleased with her so far.

Davi's Mama - WIP 3

I took this photo of the painting while working on it at the Art Club this afternoon with a different camera and it looks to be in black and white. No...I have not changed my mind, this is being done strictly in sepia watercolor paint. Here I have started defining some of the shadows better as well as the beginnings of the features.