Peachy Rose - WIP 6

I have the background underpainting (or possibly the final background) in and am pondering several scenarios of how to finish this. I like the subtle colors right now, so probably won't do much in the way of more color or value changes, but may darken around the rose a bit more here and there. I am still saying so far, so good on this one and holding my breath a bit.

Peachy Rose - WIP 5

I have finished the second glaze on the rose, done the buds and the first glaze on the leaves and stems. I will ponder what to do next. Among my ponderings will be whether to leave the rose petals soft-looking as they are or to drybrush some veining on here and there. I also need to decide what to do for the background. I have some ideas in mind, but since I am being uncharacteristically patient in doing this slowly, I will take the time to make sure of what I want to do before I commit to it. This is turning out to be more like an antiquity painting so I may at least change my mind about the colors in the background. Hmmmmm.

WIP 4 - First Glaze of Color

I have finished adding the first glaze of color to the entire rose and have added bits of the second, rosy glaze here and there. I will finish that next and then move on to the buds and leaves. I don't want to glaze over the rose too much before I do those since it is easier to keep everything integrated that way. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it anyway.

Peach Rose - WIP 3

I am trying to think of this underpainting as done before I fiddle it to death, and any other value adjustments that need to be made can be done with the color glazes? I am at the point where I start hurrying because I like how this looks so far and can't wait until it is done, so I start hurrying. Step away from the painting! This underpainting needs to dry anyway before I start any colors so I will practice on my color swatches to see what combinations I need to get the peachy color I want for the rose and see how those go on over this gray.

Peach Rose - WIP 1 and 2

I have a reference photo of a peach rose that I have been wanting to do for awhile. I usually get so "lost" in the petals of a complex rose that I decided to start with an underpainting of blue/gray for the rose, stems, buds and foliage and then add color later. I have done this successfully when painting monochromatic sepia paintings, but never with using it strictly as an underpainting, so it is an experiment to see what happens. So far, so good. This is almost a full sheet painting, painted to fit into a 24 x 36-inch frame.

I will next go on to underpainting the stems and front leaves. the background foliage will probably be done more loosely and somewhat impressionistically, we'll see. More to come....I hope!

Another movie clip trial - Prairie Dog Town

I wasn't able to get this to load on our trip on Tom's laptop computer so will try it here since I am back at my computer and see how it works. These guys were so funny to watch and listen to...they really were funny. They were seen during our visit to the Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Home again, Home again

We arrived home yesterday afternoon, after being gone exactly a month. It is good to be home, now to get on with the piles of laundry to be done and everything that needs to be put away again.

This is a photo of the area near Page, AZ that we drove past yesterday. I thought the colors at that time of the morning were so pretty.

September 19, 2007 - Kanab, UT

We are in Kanab, UT for our last night on the road, we should get home tomorrow. We were leaving Idaho before sunrise the day before yesterday and I took a photo of the sun shining on this mountain across the valley. There were stands of red trees, the most colorful that we saw on this trip. It is still a bit too early in most places for there to be much in the way of Fall foliage. The Sevier River runs alongside Highway 89 through southern Utah and this is some of the foliage we saw this morning on our way to Kanab. We will see what the Flagstaff, AZ area looks like as we drive through, probably not much foliage color yet, though.

I'll post next when we get home and get somewhat settled.

Finally, a painting

Today was the day, after not painting anything for three weeks, I decided I would paint today. We leave for home tomorrow so it was nice to have a quiet day to catch up.

This was a fairly fast painting of the Many Glaciers area of Glacier National Park. It was foggy and cloudy on the day we were there but even that had its beauty, although I would have loved to see the sun on those mountains and glaciers. I decided to do this as a monochrome since in reality it was all a monochromatic gray.

September 15, 2007 - Sapphire mining, day two

We have concluded our sapphire mining experience for this trip. We went to Gem Mountain mine today and spent hours washing and combing through gravel and found only a small amount of small sapphires. We got very tired of lifting, bending and standing so came home about 2:30. That was a long day, however, according to my feet. I am sure though that had we found a really big sapphire that we wouldn't be nearly as tired right now! The setting of the mine was beautiful, that is the first photo. The haziness in the background is from the ever-present smoke drift from wildfires here in western Montana. We passed by a base camp for the firefighters on the way to the mine, they have quite an operation set up. The second photo is of part of the mine work area, it got pretty crowded by noon.

Tomorrow we will have an easy, no driving day and get the motorhome ready for the trip home. I may even try to paint something, not much of that has been done on this trip...too many photos waiting to be taken for future paintings, I guess.

September 14, 2007 - Sapphire Mining in Phillipsburg

No photos today, I was looking at sapphires instead of through a camera! We did the Sapphire Gallery in Phillipsburg, MT (as seen on the Travel Channel) where you buy bags of concentrate (gravel), which they wash for you and then screen and dump them on your table. Your job is to pick through the gravel with tweezers and find the sapphires. We got a total of 22.83 carats of gem-quality, facet-able sapphires. Tomorrow we will go to a mine near here and do our own washing, sluicing and mining for sapphires there. Rough sapphires are a pale, greenish-blue color and transparent. They need to be heat-treated before faceting to become the recognizable ,dark blue sapphire color. We got about eight of the size that would make very nice earrings when treated and faceted, but you can send them to the place here to have them processed later, we know someone who did that and was very pleased with their service. We will wait to see what we get tomorrow. We decided to stay here an extra day and have a quiet day Sunday before we head back toward Phoenix. I'll report in tomorrow whether we find any record-beating sizes of sapphires or not....it is great fun to do the searching whether you do or not.

September 13, 2007 - Back to Helena

As we retraced our way to Helena today we had more glimpses of the Missouri River along I-15.

It was a welcome sunny day to travel. As we left the East Glacier area this morning, it was 30 degrees! Our vehicles were covered with ice. It got warmer as we headed east and then south and was quite nice by the time we got to Helena. Tom looked up the forecast for where we were this morning and tomorrow morning it is supposed to be 28 degrees! Hopefully the most brutal part of the summer will be ended by the time we return to Phoenix, we have been very cold on this last leg of our trip and look forward to some mild weather....not HOT and not cold.

We leave for Anaconda tomorrow and will spend a few days there before heading toward home. If I find a large sapphire tomorrow, I will be sure to let everyone know and take a photo! It should be fun anyway, and the Anaconda and Phillipsburg areas are supposed to be steeped in history of the old west...more photos to come.

September 12, 2007 - Many Glaciers

We had a wonderful day and a disappointing day. We awoke to a cold fog and some rain, but decided to head for the Many Glaciers area and hope the fog would lift by the time we drove there. No such luck. I am choosing to think of my photography today as "atmospheric" and not complain. I was, however, the coldest I can remember being for a long time. It was in the high 30's, very foggy and raining at times. When a cold wind would blow the fog away from where we were it was fairly clear, but at no time could we see the mountains or their glaciers very well. Oh well, we hope to return here next Spring (late June here) and take in the wildflowers and hopefully see this area with the sun on the glaciers.

Overall, it was still an enjoyable day and worth going while we were here. One good thing, we stopped at a small cafe for lunch that was little more than a small diner and had lunch. We each had a bowl of buffalo and black bean chili (positively delicious!) and split a huge Reuben sandwich (equally excellent). The place seemed to be popular and I can see why, it was spotless and provided very special food. While at that point anything warm would have been welcome, it was nice that it was also delicious.

Tomorrow we plan to head toward Anaconda, MT and try some sapphire mining, should be fun if the weather cooperates.

September 11, 2007 - Glacier National Park

We went into Glacier National Park early this morning, planning on catching the sunrise in there. It took so long to get to the park boundaries and the road to get there didn't allow for many stops when the sun was coming up. But, by the time we got into the park the sun/shadows were vivid so that was nice. It really is a wonderful park; with mountains, trees and water....all the elements I look for in landscape photos. Unfortunately, the smoke drift made for difficult photography in some places and that was a disappointment, but we were there and I took as many photos as I could and will delete the ones which were too smoky to see details. The Flathead River stops were some of my favorites. There wasn't a lot of water in most places, but the pools and cascades were just fantastic.

Tomorrow we will go the the Many Glaciers area, hopefully the smoke will not be too bad to see the glaciers there.

September 10, 2007 - Glacier Nat'l Park

We arrived in the Glacier Park area this afternoon and will plan to take in sunrise in the park tomorrow and take the Going to the Sun Road loop. This area is so beautiful, and we haven't even been in the park yet. I am sure it will be a wonderful experience and worth many photos.

This morning we followed the Missouri River as it winds alongside I-15, it was so peaceful-looking. It is much smaller here than in Chamberlain, SD where we saw it at probably its widest, it was like a huge lake there.

Our RV park that will serve as our home base for the next few days has a wonderful 360-degree view of trees and mountains. I included the motorhome photo and the view from the motorhome window above. The afternoon wind brought in a small amount of smoke from the western wildfires, but it wasn't bad and now that the wind has settled down there is none, I hope that continues for the next few days so we can get good, clear photos and see everything in its glory.

I'll be sure to send photos of the wonders of Glacier tomorrow. When I return home I plan on making new travel photo albums for my Flickr site since I can't include very many here. I have taken a little over 2,100 photos so far (thankful am I for digital cameras and no film processing!) and I am sure that Glacier will be good for many more starting tomorrow. There are so many views that beg for panorama photos that I am taking lots of those to practice with stitching them together. Good fun!

September 9, 2007 - Big Sky Country

We traveled to Helena, MT today. The sky was very cloudy most of the day but we didn't have much rain to contend with and had patchy sun, which makes for interesting patterns on the landscape. I didn't know that I-90 snaked alongside the Yellowstone River for so many miles, it was a wonderful ride to keep seeing this twisting river. The clouds and sky are so fascinating here, again I see why this is called Big Sky Country.

Tomorrow we head for Glacier Nat'l Park and will spend a few days there at least. We talked to an RV park manager there today where we will stay and he said the weather was sunny and cold. Tonight, here in Helena, we were warned to disconnect our water hose to the motorhome overnight since there were possible freeze warnings. I'm glad we brought heavy coats, the closer to Glacier we get, the colder it gets.

September 8 - To Montana

We left this morning on our way to Montana. Last night, before the sun went down it was almost 90 degrees. By this morning it was a pleasant 61. One hour into our trip West it was raining, windy and the temp had dropped to 47 degrees! Finally, cool weather, this has been lacking so far on our trip and was welcome, though a big surprise!

We stopped for the night earlier than normal this afternoon after learning that we were near where the Battle of the Little Bighorn took place (we are both, regretfully, geographically and historically challenged!). We went to the National Monument for a look at where it all happened. It was in a beautiful setting, I see why Montana is called "Big Sky Country", yet so solemn when you consider so many died there. There were many markers showing where the cavalry soldiers fell, and a monument to their horses who also died. This was one of the better National Park Monuments we have visited, no concessions selling ice cream cones, coffee mugs, etc. Very nicely done.

Tomorrow we will get closer to Glacier Nat'l Park and try to get there Monday sometime. Hopefully the rain has doused the fires by now, we sure had lots of water today.

September 7, 2007

We went on one of the scenic drives today through the Black Hills, choosing the Crazy Horse Memorial as our destination. When this is eventually completed, we can say we saw it at this stage. You can see it for quite a ways across the valley it overlooks. The front most part, including the terraced area, will be the horse. These huge sculpture projects like this and Mount Rushmore just defy belief that they are possible to carry out, but they do it.

We will head towards Montana tomorrow morning and try to be in Glacier Nat'l Park by sometime Monday. The smoke has apparently cleared in that area after some rains, I hope the rains can get to the worst of the wildfires there and completely put them out soon. We'll hope for the best for when we get there.

September 6, 2007

We went to nearby Mount Rushmore this morning after arriving in Hermosa, SD. It was overcast most of the morning but I got a few shots of blue skies and sunshine on the presidents. I was amazed at the details obtained in these massive sculptures. I noticed that Roosevelt's face even had spectacles sculpted from the rock, amazing. I zoomed in on that so you can see them.

We will have a quiet afternoon here at the motorhome and then tomorrow will scoot around the Black Hills area some more. We plan to stay here until Sunday morning, when we will head toward Glacier Nat'l Park. I spoke with a ranger this morning from there and she assured me that the recent rains have washed the smoke from the wildfires away from the park and so we will go there while we are closer to there. Maybe we will finally find some cooler weather...it has been so warm/hot wherever we have been. A cool front moved in last night and it rained quite a bit overnight, but has cleared this morning and left it a small bit cooler.

September 5, 2007

We traveled to the Badlands National Park yesterday and spent six hours inside the park. It was a great day of seeing sights and photographing them. We went early in the morning, hoping to see good shadows as well as wildlife and we hit the jackpot in all ways. The Badlands consists of about half grassland and half rugged mountains and hoodoos. The mountains are a dull, gray/beige color, but in many places at the bottom of the canyons you see yellow ochre, quinacridone rose and purple colors, much like a graded wash. I can't help it, I see names of paint in the colors of nature! I hope to start a painting of those this afternoon, we are having a quiet afternoon back at the motorhome.

We saw a herd of Bighorn Sheep (ewes and lambs only) that came right across the road in front of us. I got quite a few photos of them, they are much bigger in front of you than when seen at a distance on the side of a mountain. They were perfectly calm, munching on their roadside breakfast.

The bison is one of the herd that is resident in the park, there are something like seven hundred of them in the herd. There was no fence keeping them enclosed so I utilized my telephoto lens so as not to disturb them or cause a tragic confrontation! We have seen such stupid people going right up to them in Yellowstone Park, I wanted no part of that. They, at one point, wandered across the road in front of the Toyota minivan in front of us and quite a few of the adult males were taller than the minivan, just enormous beasts.

The prairie dog towns were so entertaining to sit and watch. We would pull up beside the road and just watch them. These guys were all sunning themselves (I think) and when we stopped, the front little guy started sounding alarms for the town....they didn't run and hide in their dens, just kept an alert eye on us. They squeek/bark quite loudly. It was funny.

Sunset on the Missouri

We stopped at Chamberlain, South Dakota for the night. Our RV park is alongside the Missouri, right on the edge of the river but up higher. It is a beautiful river. Here is one of the sunset photos I took in a series...braving mosquitoes all the way. They sure do seem to like me! We will head toward the Black Hills and the Badlands tomorrow and hope to be in that area for several days. I'll take shots of Mount Rushmore!

Fairmont, MN

We drove the farm roads to Frost, MN this morning so I could take photos of the old family farm there. Well, I am really bummed because it no longer exists! The barn and all the outbuildings are gone, the farm house has been replaced by a new beautiful home and only the trees remain as I remember them. So, there goes my painting of the old farm. I hope I can someday find a suitable photo to use as a reference. This was a real surprise to me.

We visited with an aunt of mine in Bricelyn, MN and then came home to get the motorhome ready for the trip westward toward the Black Hills of South Dakota tomorrow. I have added so many photos to my farm/barn collection. When I have the time I will add them to my Flickr site. Most of the farms in this area are so neat and clean, beautiful old barns, too.

Test for blog video

I took this video clip of the Iowa River this afternoon to try to add it to the blog. So far, so good. I'll go to the blog in a minute and see how it opens.

This is our last day in the Amana Colonies, we leave and head toward Minnesota tomorrow morning. The Amana Colonies are a big German area and we have enjoyed all the German food specialities while here, in fact enjoyed them so much we have decided to just go to the meat market where they process and smoke all the meats for the local restaurants (they have been wonderful!) and buy some of the local specialties and take with us instead of eating any more carbs for awhile. I do believe we have both eaten more carbs in two days here than we normally would for two weeks! Good German cooking! We took a scenic drive through the colonies this afternoon and found a lake with water lilies unlike any I have seen. The lily pads were 2-3 feet in diameter! They really were something. I'd like to paint some of those.

Amana, Iowa...Day Two

After being on the road for a week, it was time this morning to do some housecleaning around the motorhome. This was after a monumental breakfast at one of the Amana Colony restaurants, unbelievable! We went to another restaurant for dinner tonight and decided we just cannot do that again....we will spend tomorrow and probably the next few days "drying out", with no carbs.

We went to Cedar Rapids this afternoon and saw Collins Radio as it is now....Tom worked here forty years ago for a few months before being sent to Viet Nam for Collins. Some things were the same, many had changed. We made a Wal mart run and then drove around taking photos. The Cedar River runs through the city and we found a few places to take photos, that is the big river in the photo. The other photo is of the creek that runs alongside one side of our RV park here. One additional Cedar Rapids note...Quaker Oats is here and when you are walking alongside the river you can smell the oats cooking. Really was interesting. General Mills is big here, too.

We will do some more sightseeing tomorrow and then it is on to Albert Lea, MN to check out my Norwegian side of the family's old homestead farm. I want to take photos and possibly paint it. I have certainly collected enough photos of barns and farms to be able to do a 100-painting series! The barns, especially, are so interesting...no two seem alike in any area but all are beautiful buildings.

Amana Colonies, Iowa

We are at the Amana Colonies in Iowa for the next three nights. We had our first really scrumptious dinner tonight. We will have to limit ourselves to trips to the restaurants since we could over-do without much provocation. But, we plan on a few more good meals while here! We drove without sunshine all day today but didn't get any rain until the last 15 minutes we were on the road, as we arrived here at the Amana Colonies RV Park. It is a huge and nice facility, as we remembered it.

Tom has worked with our satellite receiver and gotten it all to work except for last night, when it was so stormy and windy the dish wouldn't stay stable on the roof of the motorhome. Otherwise, it is great to have satellite reception when we are in the boonies! There are no trees blocking the direction of the dish here (as shown in the photo), so it should all work well. The sun has finally come out, it is about 7:00 here. Nice, mild temps. We read that the Phoenix area is having record heat right now, I am so glad we planned this trip! After spending half of July and most of August there, it is good to be away for awhile. Hopefully, when we return it will be to cooler temps there.

Kansas to Nebraska

We left Dodge City, Kansas this morning and stopped this afternoon near Grand Island, Nebraska. We finally got to an Interstate heading in the direction we want to go. We have decided that after traveling for three days on farm highways that Interstates are the way to go. There still is traffic on the smaller highways, lots of local haul trucks going very fast, and too many small towns where you have to slow to 20 mph, which really slows progress. However, I took 132 farm and barn photos today, and enjoyed seeing those small towns. The main street photo with this submission is one of the many small towns we went through today, I couldn't tell you which one. But, this is memorable for the brick street we traveled over, it shook everything loose in the motorhome (including the passengers!) and was quite an experience.

It has remained windy here on the Plains and tonight we had a thunderstorm. Thankfully, nothing monumental but when it thunders on the Plains, you know it!

Tomorrow we plan to head east and go to the Amana Colonies for a few days. We have been on the road for three days now and want to stay in one place for a few days. I can't think of a better place to do that with all the wonderful restaurants there....two days of gluttony!

New Mexico to Oklahoma to Kansas

We left Tucumcari, NM this morning and traveled through the extreme northwest corner of Texas, through about 50 miles of the Oklahoma panhandle and into Kansas. We are in Dodge City tonight. We will head for Interstate 80 and go east toward the Amana Colonies in Iowa tomorrow. We might go all the way to Amana, but might also stop before then along I-80. The weather is very windy and fairly warm here, but at night it does cool off along our trip so that is okay. At least it hasn't been above 100 on our trip, right at 99 is close enough, though!

More tomorrow....

Tucumcari, NM

We traveled from Las Cruces to Tucumcari, NM today. We avoided the busy interstates and chose to drive through the ranching highways and less traveled roads. Well, today that didn't work out as we had planned, there was a lot of traffic and more construction than we thought we would encounter. No problems though, and we arrived to our RV park for tonight, which happens to be off of Route 66. I can remember traveling through Tucumcari as a girl on our trips to Minnesota and I think that, though that was a long time ago, many of the same motels are still in business. Route 66 is still Route 66 here.

Tomorrow we will travel through the extreme northwest corner of Texas and into Kansas. The weather is cooperating so far, will hope for the best with that in the days to come.

August 25, Hatch NM

We drove to Hatch, NM today, it is time for the chile harvest there. Their annual Hatch Chile Festival is next weekend, I am glad we went when it was a bit quieter. There were quite a few vendors selling chiles and others were roasting huge bags of chile for sale. We bought two of the chile ristras, went to a chile field and took some photos, then ate lunch at a local Hatch restaurant. We both had local chile rellenos...yum! I bought a small basket of Anaheim chiles to take along and make rellenos on our trip as well as some local ground chile powder to make future enchiladas. We went right to the source! Hatch is purported to be the Chile Capital of the World...I don't know how true that is but they certainly sell a lot of chiles and chile products.

Tomorrow we plan to head toward Tucumcari and then on to the Midwest, barring floods or anything else going on where we are headed. We are watching that closely and may have to change our plans for destinations again...if it isn't fires in the West it is flooding in the Midwest. We will try to stay out of trouble.

August 24, 2007

We are in Las Cruces, NM until Sunday morning. We visited White Sands National Monument today. The "sand" is actually gypsum and in parts was a pristine white color. There are parts that have desert plants growing through the gypsum, and parts were high drifts. Then, we went to Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, a NM State Park. This has to be the highest volume of glyphs in one place of all the petroglyph sites we have visited. There were many glyphs that we had not seen before anywhere, and lots of them. The downside was that we visited between noon and 2:00 PM on a very hot and sunny day. We had to quit before the end of the trail happened because we got too hot, but not before I had just about ruined my poor feet climbing over many rocks to get good angles for the glyph photos (I took 125 photos there). At any rate, it was a wonderful petroglyph site to visit and after we downed 44-ounce icy diet drinks in Tularosa, we were revived and came back to Las Cruces. Tomorrow we will visit Hatch, NM...famous for Hatch Chiles. I want to try Chile Rellenos for lunch tomorrow at one of the local restaurants and possibly buy some chile ristras. Should be fun. No more rock climbing in the hot sun, though, for awhile!

This is my do-over, "Mulligan" painting of the Spanish Moss in the cemetery. I was trying for a different "mood" while trying to improve my rendition of the Spanish Moss. Which do you prefer?

Cemetery with Spanish Moss

This is a painting I did as a group project for one of my online art groups. We were to create a "mood" painting. This is from a photo I took in Walterboro, SC and it was sort of spooky but peaceful being in this very old cemetery with the Spanish Moss hanging from all the trees. I think I will start another painting from this photo and try another technique for the moss.

I have created a few new sets for my Travel Photos collection in Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/

I will eventually get many more sets of individual trips and locations as I get to them. There are plenty more photos from where these came!

Walterboro Swamp Garden Final

After carefully considering the suggestions made by my two online critique groups, I made some changes in this, particularly in the water. It reads more realistically now, but seems to be overworked a bit. Of course, this is a very overgrown scene in real life, so part of me just considers this more realistic! Anyway, this is the final version so I will rest for awhile!