May 15 - Glacier Bay

This is a short clip of a minor glacier calving. It sounded like it was going to be huge, but by the time I got the camera over to that portion of the glacier it was just a few crumbles. I will add a still shot that shows the amazing color of the ice. If it had not been so frigid out on our balcony I would have stayed out there looking at that color all day. This was our day to cruise through Glacier Bay. It had fewer glaciers than the name implies, but they were beautiful. Tomorrow would be the cruise through College Fjord, which I enjoyed even more. Photos to follow!

May 14 - Skagway

This is the famed Yukon Suspension Bridge out of Skagway, Alaska. Tom chose to not cross over this and he took my photo doing it. It was a very wobbly feeling going so high over the river below, but Ernie and I did it together so we were fine. The problem was that once we made it to the other side it started snowing! None of these people is me, I will find the photos from his camera later. For those who don't know, I took along an Ernie (Sesame Street) doll and took his photo looking at all the sites we saw while in Alaska. He rode in my fanny pack for two weeks and saw many wonders at all the places we visited. Now that I am home, I will write a storybook for my granddaughter called "Ernie Goes to Alaska" and use the photos. So, Ernie had no choice but to accompany me, through the snow, across this bridge. He kept on smiling, though!

This is a lake in the Yukon region. It had this magical turquoise color and had most of the ice melted off it. It was beautiful!

Once back on the tour bus, we started heading down the mountain, and where on the way up there were beautiful mountain passes, all we could see was on the way down was snow, white out conditions. It was a scary trip down, but we all made it safely. Our tour bus driver looked to be about 14 years old, so it was a tense trip back, but he managed to get us back to the ship. He was a college student, but they sure do look young these days! For these two Arizona wimps, it was an experience to remember, though not want to repeat.

May 13 - Juneau

We took a photo safari on land and sea while in Juneau. Here is a Humpback Whale arching out of the water a bit. This was taken with a telephoto lens so, while it looks very close to our boat, it was a distance from it....no animals were hurt in this exercise.
Here we have a bouy that has been overtaken by these sea lions. They were barking at us loudly, although they were farther away than this looks. Their coats were just gleaming in the bit of sunshine that peeked through the clouds. Little ones would try to slide up on the bouy and the bigger ones would push them off again, but they kept trying to get up there!
This is that same Humpback, only a prized tail shot. I got better with catching these as I tried more of them. You have to set the camera on sports mode or whatever lets you take rapid-fire shots.
This is the famed Mendenhall Glacier. This site almost made me cry it was so breathtakingly beautiful. I couldn't quite believe I was actually there, seeing it in person. This is truly Alaska now!
This is Mendenhall Lake, formed by the melting glacier and snow runoff. The water was perfectly smooth and showed off the blue reflections. The darker the blue color, the fresher the iceberg is from cracking away from the glacier. Cool, huh?

May 12 - Ketchikan

We arrived at Ketchikan on Monday, boy was it cold! Here is Tom, on our way to buy him an Alaska hat to keep his ears warm. There was a very interesting, and surprisingly reasonable trading post right on the pier that had much better warm hats than we had seen in Arizona (duh).

We then toured through the Rainforest Wildlife Sanctuary. Of course, having a name like that it had to live up to it so we tried out our new raincoats from Cabela's right away. Everything was dripping in lichen and moss. They rescue and try to rehab wildlife and had some reindeer there and this bald eagle. It was huge and won't be able to be released due to damage to one wing. It was so regal-looking. I enjoyed getting such a close-up of this magnificent bird.

For our first taste of how cold Alaska really is in early May, it was indeed cold to these two Arizona wimps.
One interesting sideline to our visit to this rainforest sanctuary was that we have a friend here in Arizona who runs a wildlife rescue foundation. We knew she was going to Alaska to do some of the same work for the summer, but she didn't say where she would be. We walked in to the gift shop and there was Geni! How many thousands of miles away from Arizona were we and we met up with a friendly face we knew! It was a big surprise for all three of us. She has a manager who runs her sancutary when she is gone and she was working there for the summer, what a change for her!

May 10 Leaving Vancouver and First Day at Sea

Here we are, finally on the ship (our airline-delayed group was the last to board the ship before sailing!) and pulling away from the dock at Vancouver. How nice to be aboard!

The next photo is shot down through several deck levels through the midship atrium area. It is a gorgeous ship.

The last photo was on Sunday, May 11. It was our first full day at sea. We passed so many of these fjords, very beautiful. I am so thankful we had a room with a balcony, it was cold but just so beautiful to stand out there and take photos.

I will keep adding travelog tidbits as I have time, so there may be some interruptions until I have my husband back home from the hospital, hopefully soon!

Good News/Bad News/Hopeful News

I have no photos to share. My expectations were to be able to reconstruct our journey to Alaska when home to show what we saw at each port of call or stop along the interior tours in Alaska. Well, my husband suffered a mild "silent" heart attack on our first day back home in Arizona, necessitating a trip to Urgent Care, followed by an ambulance trip to the hospital Emergency Room, to be followed by a stay in the ICU, followed by a stay in the Telemetry Unit where he underwent dialysis, monitoring, etc. to arrive at the point tonight, where we do not know how long he will be away from home, but we do know he is making progress so I rejoice! No photos have been harmed in this exercise, they are downloaded and awaiting my time and attention to enter them in an organized fasion on this blog and in my Flickr account. Once I have my husband back at home, I will be able to stop running back and forth to the hospital and pay attention to things I HAVE to do and WANT to do here at home. I beg your patience and understanding as we do the immediate, high-priority things that must be done. In the end, I promise you photos of great beauty and links to many photos of such diversity and beauty that will share with you some of the beauty that we saw firsthand.

Blessings to all...Susan

Still in Alaska

We are still in Alaska, having difficulties making our laptop computer work with WiFi and with the limited time on the hotel's computers I haven't added anything to the blog for a while....sorry. I have thousands of photos to share so will do that when I can settle down for awhile and get it done. We will travel by train to Anchorage tonight and be there until Monday, when we we fly to Seattle, collect our van and head for home. the weather so far has been sunny this week, rainy for the cruise portion of the tour, and overall better than expected for here at this time of the year.

Until I can download some of my photos here and at Flickr, I bid you adieu and will check in later.....Susan

Washington - Day One

We arrived across the Washington State border this morning fairly early from Oregon. We chose to go toward Portland along the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge. Two years ago we traveled the length of the Gorge along the Oregon side and found the WA side to be interesting, also. One of these shots is near the Portland end of the Gorge, another is across the river from Multnomah Falls. We saw this up close and personal two years ago on the OR side and it was magnificent.
Even though we saw it today across the expanse of the river, it was still impressive.

The Bonneville Dam is the other photo. This is remarkable due to the fact that at this time there is controversy between the Feds and the Environmentalists over the trapping/killing of seas lions who camp out every year at the base of the dam and eat a ton of salmon who use the fish ladders to go to their spawning grounds up river each year. It was so interesting because as we stopped alongside the river/dam to take these photos we saw lots of sea lion heads pop up for air, so they were there in force. I don't seem to have caught any of them in the photos, but they were there, probably munching away underwater on the many salmon.

We are staying two nights at a nice Best Western motel in Tumwater, WA (home of Olympia beer and their Artesians!) and then early Saturday morning we will head for Sea-Tac airport to fly to Vancouver to begin our Alaskan adventure. It is nice to be back in the Northwest again!

In Oregon

We have encountered some laptop/WiFi difficulties so far but found a good connection today, no trip blog entries so far, but I hope to do better now. This is a photo taken while on the road in eastern Oregon. There were many mountain peaks with snow such as this and there was a cold wind blowing. Tomorrow we hope to be at least as far as Portland for the night, and then on to Seattle on Friday. Good trip so far, but we sure miss having the convenience of a motorhome! Until next time...

Last HOT day for awhile.....

Ernie has asked if he can go along with us on our Alaskan adventure to provide personal commentary to his friend, Aubrey, and show her where we are visiting on this trip. I guess the rest of you will have to settle for keeping up with us through this blog.

You all stay well, we will try to do the same, and will check in through this blog as we travel along. Excitement rising....

South Carolina Marshland WIP

This is where I am with this painting. I am not sure whether I am submitting it now when I am pleased with it so far because I am afraid that once I start putting the water reflecitons I will ruin it or just to show a work in progress. It has lots to be done but I don't want to do more with shading, etc. until I get those dreaded water reflections done.

The ref photo was taken while we were driving along a highway on the way from Edisto Beach to Charleston, SC last summer. I don't know if this is cultivated grassland, marshland, tidal flats or what since I am unfamiliar with this area, but everything was such a nice green color and the water reflections were what prompted me to take the photos, so I guess I had better do them justice.

I don't know if I will finish this before we leave on our Alaskan adventure, but we'll see. Stay tuned for the upcoming travelogue as we journey toward our cruise fun.

Still nothing to show

I have been tying up loose ends, preparing to pack in earnest for our Alaskan adventure, so have not been painting and probably will not do any painting until we return. This trip will be all about photography and experiencing Alaska in person.

I have added a link on the sidebar to an interesting and exciting, often hilarious website I have found. Well, my husband found the site and referred me to it, I have to give credit where credit is due! He was looking at the Motorhome Forum and clicked on the forum site that discusses camping recipes and many people were following the recipes submitted by a person whose website is called "Pioneer Woman". The link is http://thepioneerwoman.com/ and it is very entertaining to read, as well as having super recipes. Her writing style is very self-effacing and often reminiscent of Lucille Ball's adventures and I love her attitude. If you are surfing the web and want to look at something unique, this one is a hoot! It is packed with recipes, a romance story, great photography and lots to explore. I am hooked.

Nothing to show....

I have no painting photos to show after yesterday's painting session at the Art Club. This is because I was painting on Yupo and was already on the second try at painting the Buchart Gardens painting on this piece of Yupo and had wiped out the first attempt and started another. I am none too pleased with Try Two, either! For some reason I am having difficulty setting the early, background values properly and it is throwing me off for the rest of the painting. So, thinking I have nothing to lose (other than yesterday's paint used!), I will try some of the lifting techniques used by George James and see what happens to this mess. If that fails, I will wipe the whole thing down again and start over. After having done two successful landscape paintings (with ponds or streams) I am not sure why I can't do this one this time that has a pond with lily pads. Must not be my time to do this scene on Yupo. If a third time fails I will not beat myself up about it but will save the photo for watercolor paper. I am just stubborn enough to want to do this beautiful scene well so will persevere and get it done properly one of these days.

Mountain Vista

This was an exercise with the mentorees (using one of their photos) to practice some different techniques, such as spattering and mass foliage. For once, I tried to raise the color in the mountains instead of trying to paint them as seen in the photo and like how they turned out. To set them back, I used washes of white gouache after they were dry and the foreground painted. I saw this method in a book and will keep it in my mind for when I inadvertently miss on the values and need to set mountains back farther for perspective.

I also was re-trying Kilamanjaro paper again. I thought I liked it before, when I had bought a 25-sheet pack of it a few years ago. After using some Arches I decided that was more the paper for me and have not used Kilamanjaro since. Interestingly, I noticed yesterday that I didn't get the unintended blossoms that I sometimes get on Arches paper, where I don't want them. In my logical mind (assuming I have one!) I think it might have something to do with the fact that Kilamanjaro is a softer, more absorbant paper and maybe it stores a bit more moisture just below the surface and doesn't let the wetter paint push the pigment, like it stays wet longer? If this is so, I may have to switch back to Kilamanjaro since painting here on the desert is a constant struggle to get washes laid down without blossoms. Hmmmm.

Image size 11x15 on Kilamanjaro watercolor paper

Yupo Petroglyphs II

Here is the second in my Yupo Petroglyphs series. I just love working with all this texture. A friend at the Art Club yesterday gave me a strip of what is called Sequin Waste. It is what is left when the machines punch out sequins and is like a round mesh. It works for both negative lifting as well as positive stamping on the Yupo, neat stuff. Thanks, Betty!

I don't know what I would do without my generous friends since I painted this in this size (12x22) to fit into a frame (19x28) given to me by another friend, who had a number of large metal frames given to him that he couldn't use so he shared them with several of us who were very pleased to get them. Thanks now go to Woody! The frame is a coppery metal, which should look great with these colors.

My goal for this one was to make the Kokopelli's and other figures sort of hidden among the texture so you have to look for them to see them. This Yupo is great fun to work with and makes for a nice change once in awhile from my more controlled efforts to create something realistic.

Rusty Ranch Bucket

This is my submission for the Watercolor Workshop's April project where everyone paints from the same photo. We all usually do a different take on the same subject, this time I made the photo more Southwestern by placing the fence and rusty pieces in a desert setting.

I tried painting foliage very loosely and flowing this time and want to return to my usual method of using a texture brush to lay in the glazes. But, I like painting rust!

This painting is available as an original painting, but also has been made into notecards. Let me know if you need some!

Newspaper Rock Final

I finished this full sheet Newspaper Rock this morning. I may have miscounted, but there seem to be 88 glyphs on this. The spattering alone took three sessions. Now to mat and frame this, hopefully without breaking my big sheet of glass. It will go into a 28 x 36 frame.

Now, on to my next victim, a desert scene I started at the Art Club Thursday.

Newspaper Rock WIP 3

Now, all the masking has been rubbed off and I will begin adding lots of textures to this. My hand hurts!

The fun part begins....

Newspaper Rock WIP 2

I have completed this to the stage where all the background color has been added. Next, I will finish removing ALL the masking, that is if my hand holds out. On a full sheet painting, with all this masking of the figures, that is a lot of rubbing! In addition to the masking on the figures, I used an old toothbrush to flick masking all over the painting so when it is removed it will look like rocky textures with light spots sprinkled. I have started removing the masking and so far I am glad I did the flicking ofn the masking fluid because it looks cool. But, like I said, that is a lot of masking to rub off. After the masking is removed, I will begin texturing the rock and the glyphs and enhancing the cracks and fissures in the rock wall. Did I mention that this is a full sheet painting?

Gina's Hollyhocks

This is a painting we finished in this morning's mentoring session. The reference photo was provided, with permission to paint, by Gina who lives in the Seattle area. These are her hollyhocks and I loved the look in the photo of the flowers against the white trellis. I like the whole painting, but wish I had gotten the trellis slats more straight. Sigh. too late for that now and I do like the rest of it.

The mentorees did a fabulous job of theirs, when I get some photos of theirs I will post them here, with their permission of course.

This was a fun one to do, I may have to do another one only apply the trellis masking tape more carefully!

Newspaper Rock WIP

This is the first WIP I am submitting of the earlier smaller study of Newspaper Rock. I am four hours into this full sheet painting, including three glazes of the yellow ochre and three hours of painting the glyphs with masking fluid. I am using Pebeo Drawing Gum for masking and it is a gray color when dry, the masking will be removed once I glaze on all the rock colors, leaving the ochre colored glyphs.

Seeing as there is a Vanguard Artists meeting this afternoon at the museum and a weekend ArtChix sale, I will probably not do anything with this for a few days. Once I start glazing the rock colors, it usually goes fairly rapidly from that point.

Have a good weekend, all!

This is a painting we did in our mentoring session. My student had lived in Holland for 3 1/2 years while her husband was a consultant there. The photo was dark and indistinct, but we simplified it a bit and did the windmill as the focus and without a clear light source, but it still has a richness I like. What do you think?

Newspaper Rock Revisited

After thinking on this some more, and receiving a thoughtful critique from a WcW member (thanks Jane!) I decided to splatter quite a bit of the rock colors and some quin gold on this just to age them a bit and make them look less pasted on. I do like this and will probably do the same with the larger version when I do that. In the meantime, I am preparing to do another Aubrey portrait, stay tuned!

Newspaper Rock

This must be my day for finishing up projects that have been left partially finished. Now, I can move on to my next big idea. No wonder I can't remember anything, there are so many ideas filling my brain there is no room for remembered things!

I saw this method of doing petroglyph watercolors in a gallery in Tubac a few years back and, unfortunately, cannot remember the name of the artist as I would like to give her credit for the inspiration for this piece. This is a quarter-sheet study done to check out this method for a full sheet painting I would like to do. Stayed tuned for that! I plan on using LOTS of my reference photos of petroglyphs, I have hundreds and hundreds of them.

I thought I was finished with this one but now think I will do some splattering to make the petroglyphs looks less smooth and more aged. There is something about seeing photos of my paintings on the computer screen that acts like a "you need to do this" reminder. Strange.

Lovebirds

This is my submission to the Watercolor Workshop project for the month of March where we all are to paint from the same photo, these fabulous birds. One of the artists in the group, Janet of Tenerife, Canary Islands, did hers in this lovely oval of foliage. I liked the composition so much I asked for, and received, her permisison to borrow her idea for my painting.

For those who were painting with me at the Art Club last Thursday who wanted me to make a shadowy left eye on the left bird's tipped head, it is there in the shadows. I did it, it just does not show up well in the photo. I try to please!

These birds show the affection that is Nature, huh?

New Link

Every once in awhile I find an artist's website or blog that just blows me away so I bookmark it and keep returning again and again. This happened this morning with another artist's site that shows her journey into the world of oils. I "know" her previously through Watercolor Workshop and have always thought that when I grow up I want to paint watercolor portraits just like Doris. Now, she is giving oils an earnest try and, of course, she is doing wonderfully well in that. This girl can paint, no matter the medium.

I am not trying to turn my blog into a testimonial on other artists, but if the intent of this blog is to journal my artistic thoughts I simply have to share my thoughts on the journeys of others and Doris's journey inspires me greatly.

I have added the link Doris Glovier - Journey in Oils to my links list and you can check it out if you want. She also is a wonderful photographer who shares her great photos with us at Watercolor Workshop, she truly has it going on!

Yupo Petroglyphs

I wanted to do something different at the art club Thursday afternoon so decided to do some more Yupo. I brought along different objects from around the house to use for "stamping" onto the Yupo. I used these stamps both negatively and positively. I started out trying to create something for the Arizona Artists Guild Spring show, with the theme of "Green - Found objects transformed". I thought the nylon mesh, foam paint rollers, stencils, bubble wrap, etc. would qualify as "found objects" and this might work for that show entry.

I got started putting layer after layer of watercolor paint on this, removing bits of it with the meshes and bubble wrap, adding to it with positive stamping with the objects and just kept going for three hours. I had so much fun I think I lost sight of my original theme, but I really didn't care by the time I got done with this, it was a fun time of discovery.

What is so strange is that this is only the second almost-abstract painting I have ever attempted, I usually do more realistic landscapes, etc. I was in virgin territory here and wasn't sure what to do next. I took it to the Vanguard Artists meeting yesterday afternoon, hoping to get some feedback about what else was needed design-wise, etc. and was told to just sign it and leave it alone, that was the overwhelming critique with this. Cool! Since I don't look at much abstract art I really couldn't get a good feeling about this but now I think I will just frame it. It will be matted and fit into a 29 x 36 frame, I hope I don't break the glass on this big one, too. I still have to replace the glass with Plexiglas for the last one I broke while framing it. These big sheets of thin glass aren't very forgiving!

Mentoring painting

I chose this pueblo scene for the mentoring group to get some practice in value shifts and grayscale underpainting. This is my painting from the session. I like how the underpainting works for scenes like this.

No awards

We attended the reception for the Peoria Celebration of Artists last night. It was very crowded and a lovely reception. Alas, my painting did not win any awards, but I felt good in seeing that most of the ones that did win were of very high quality, as were most of the accepted paintings on display. It is a bit discouraging to see, as happens often, what is chosen for awards when the paintings chosen are slanted toward one discipline (abstract, etc.) or another for every award. I saw many more traditonal representational paintings than is normal to be chosen for a show and found that gratifying since that is what I paint and understand. This is the second show I have been accepted into that I didn't have a good camera with me (why can't I remember that?) to show me by my painting and the cell phone camera just doesn't focus in that lighting situation. One of these days, if I get into any other shows, I will post a good photo here.

I have quite a few unfinished, but nearing completion, works in progress on my worktable right now. I will work on getting those finished this weekend and post here. I also worked on a large Yupo painting in the below abstract style (yeah, I know, I don't care for that style much) this week....yikes! I am really in unknown territory when I do that and rarely have a clue what to do, but this time I had such fun doing it that I didn't care. More to follow on the technique when I post the painting.

If you would like to see some of the many photos I took on our week long trip to the Camp Verde area, please click on http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/sets/72157604068698963/ and you can see some of the over 1,500 photos we took between the two of us. These are just a few of the sights we saw and enjoyed. It is good to be home but not to be viewing the dusty house and mountain of laundry!

I tried to get the slideshow link to work but it shows just a few photos and then goes black, even though they are visible as being part of the set. Strange. Anyway...I promise, as time permits, to get these labeled and add some more photos from the trip.

Out of Africa

We spent yesterday at Out of Africa, a wildlife park near Camp Verde, AZ. They have enclosures for most of the animals, and some roam freely in the center of the park, in a natural environment much like Africa. Those who roam freely come up to the open bus for photo ops. I took 500 photos yesterday, but some of that number was inflated by my use of the action shot feature that took multiple shots at once to catch the animals moving. My favorite photo is that of the male lion, it looks like he is very close, but I was on a viewing platform and used a telephoto lens. Many of my photos were shot through chain link fence so it was great to get a clear shot of this guy. My next favorite shot was of the white tiger female. She was just gleaming white in the sun. I was just about six feet away from her and she just considered I was there and watched me with little interest. We walked a lot again at the park so we are getting some exercise in on this trip. Still having fun! We will leave for home tomorrow.

Camp Verde Adventure - Day 4

We spent the morning re-exploring Jerome, a hillside old mining town. Most of the buildings are mid-1800 contruction, at least those that didn't slide down the mountain in the thirties! It is a bit touristy and artsy-fartsy, but charming all the same. The two building photos need no explanation. The third photo does need an explanation....I am NOT making a political statement with this. We were driving down a street there and on the fence was this display and signs. We laughed and I took a photo. No matter whose side you are on, this is a funny sight!

Tomorrow we go to Out of Africa, a wildlife park here in Camp Verde. We have heard such good reports on this place that I hope to get many good photos of African animals. Should be fun.

Camp Verde Adventure Day 3

We spent today tromping through cliff dwellings and photographing many more petroglyophs to add to my petroglyph/pictograph library. It was a fun, great and tiring day but so nice to spend in this wonderful part of the planet. Red rocks rock!

Camp Verde Adventure - Day 1 and 2

We saw such a green desert on our trip to Camp Verde yesterday. The desert north of Phoenix was a velvety green, with some wildflowers emerging. As we got to the higher desert elevations, however, the foliage was its Winter colors and most of the deciduous trees were still barren. Our RV park for the week is by a stream that is running fast due to snow melt and is in a grove of Sycamore trees. Sycamores have white bark and they are still with no leaves.

This morning we chose a forest road that would lead us to the V Bar V petroglyph site. There were quite a few streams that had water running fast and deep. For those familiar with the I-17 Interstate to Flagstaff, you cross over Wet Beaver Creek, only I have never seen any water in this. Well, today it was running swiftly and deeply with water. The petroglyph site required a half-mile hike in and out, but was not a bad trail. Got some exercise! There were many petroglyphs on this cliff face, some we had not encountered before. I am showing one photo of this site, these were either cranes or herons and there were a few different astrological symbols than we have seen elsewhere.

On the way back we stopped at a creek that I neglected to find the name of and the creek had nice quiet pools and at places the water ran through deep red rock slabs. I am showing two views of this interesting creek.

We will explore the old part of Cottonwood tomorrow. The weather has been beautiful so far. Talk to you then.