I have been asked again to teach a watercolor class at my community Art Club, this time for intermediate watercolorists. Yesterday was our first class and it went well, was a lot of fun, and hopefully inspired the eleven students in the class.
After the Tuesday morning snowfall, we waited for the roads to clear and drove up into the nearby Florida Mountains. The lighting on these mountains was very dramatic at that time, and changed from being in the clouds to being in the glistening snow rapidly. This shot reminded me of being in Alaska or what the Alps must look like, although I am sure there would have been much deeper snow!
This is a nine-shot panorama of this range. We drove into the Spring Canyon part which is a pass to Rockhound State Park, Spring Canyon, which goes through the left side in this photo and up to about the 5,000 foot elevations. There was more snow there and there were families having snowball fights, etc. while we were there. It was a great excursion for us, who rarely see snow!
We awoke this morning to this...snow! It had been predicted for overnight but when we went to bed last night the skies were clear so we thought it would be a false alarm. But, we got about 2 inches before the temps changed it to a light rain so it won't last too long here at the lower levels. if the roads aren't too bad this afternoon we may try to get some photo ops at the nearby mountains.
We are enjoying a Winter Getaway vacation at this time. We headed East on I-10 yesterday and came to our favorite Deming RV park - 81 Palms. I drove for the last part of the trip and, while driving, noticed the reflection of our rig in the back of this shiny (though somewhat battered) semi in front of us. I asked Tom to grab my camera and take photos of this, but I had the wrong lens on it so you can't see it as clearly as I had hoped, but we are there! On my honor, I had nothing to do with the right side of that rear door, it really was beat up.
I had planned on posting this today as the final painting, but after seeing the photo on the PC screen decided it needed some more tweaking. I mentioned earlier that I would be working on a study of one of Sandy Maudlin's paintings on Yupo of this subject. I did not copy her excellent composition of this; but, rather, added the same elements so I could see if I could replicate them. Her Christmas ornaments were as they should be, mine are more separate in a less pleasing way, but served my purpose for this study.
We had several early-morning errands to run yesterday morning so headed out just as the sun was coming up. It is so wonderful to have a good, purse-sized digital camera with me at all times so I don't miss shooting these spontaneous moments. We have had quite a few cloudy-sky days lately and these make for fantastic sunrises. It is during mornings like this that I am grateful that I can't seem to sleep late, this is a blessing and a curse!
One of our errands was to the recycling center, so pardon the fence and nearby rooftops but that is where we were at this point of the sunrise. Plus, we were being green! Before we left our community I tried shooting the sunrise through the saguaro cactus and mesquite trees at the entrance, but since this is a new camera for me I wasn't letting it focus before shooting the photo and they were all blurry. Drat! But, you take 'em when you can get 'em so you get to see roof tops and recycle bins.
As we were driving through Sun City West the rosy glow was being replaced by this golden glow. Sun City West is recognizable by the thousands of palm trees there, they look nice in silhouette.
Very little blog posting has been going on around here for the last week. I was either preparing for, or enjoying, the visits of our sons and their families over the Thanksgiving holiday. When I knew Aubrey would be here, she and I planned on a painting session and a beading session to further explore our creativity together. I drew simple (coloring book style) turkeys onto watercolor paper) and set out the paints to let her do whatever with. As you can see, her interpretation of a turkey was one of a black one.
I attended a demonstration by a fellow artist last week, in which he demonstrated how to create better reference photos for paintings by using Photoshop CS4. I took good notes of the terms he used and searched through my Photoshop Elements 7 that I used. I found I was able to do much the same thing with this program and am happy with how this Notan turned out. A Notan is an improvement to the grayscale photos I used to print to show where the lights and darks are in a photo so I can save the white of the paper in the best spots. In the Notan above, I was able to see if I had the center of interest in the right place and had the darks and lights next to each other to enhance each other. I liked doing this and will continue now that I got it all figured out. My blogger-buddy, Rhonda, did a Notan earlier this year of some Flamingos, I think. It was good to have seen hers develop as the demonstration went on last week because I already had seen the benefit of doing this.
This is the underpainting and first phase of the painting, using the Notan to preserve the lights. As you can see I have covered the lights with green on the grassy area where these birds are standing, but I wanted the lights bouncing off the birds to be the whitest whites of the painting so decided to tone that area down below the birds and go darker when I put in the grass clumps.
While we were on our Benson, AZ trip last week, I posted some of the glorious sunset photos I took while there. When we arrived home last Sunday, we were greeted with this great sunset, right over our house! This shot was looking down our street toward the west.
This was the shot over our side neighbor's house.
This was shot over our back neighbor's house, looking toward the south.
Today, we drove to the Safford/Thatcher, AZ areas. It was not that scenic per se, but on the trip there as we neared Safford there was a sign for Lake Roper State Park. Well, on the way back we could not help but go in and see what "our" lake looked like. It was a small lake, but the way the State Park System had designed this area was remarkable. They have wonderful RV facilities, natural hot spring hot tubs, fishing, lots of waterfowl, etc. We had our picnic lunch on an "island" picnic area, that was very quiet and peaceful there. We want to return there to stay in our motorhome for awhile. I also could not help myself, I had to buy a cap that said "Lake Roper State Park".
We started out today, planning on driving to Patagonia, AZ; but were disappointed to see the overcast skies and temperatures (with winds) of 43 degrees. I took very few photos of that area since the clouds were so low, it was COLD (okay, I am a wimp!) and there were no inspiring shots showing light/dark contrasts. So, we decided while we were so close to Nogales in Mexico, that we would use our passports and go across to see what we could find. We, neither one, had been to Nogales past our college days and knew it might have changed a lot, but went to see. Well, right across the border (in walking distance, which we were doing) were only pharmacies and dental clinics. We never did find the customary tieindas that used to be there, only taxi stands, clinics, etc. So, we got back across the borders after spending only $10 for a copper bracelet (which the tiendaria had followed me down the street after I had refused to buy it at $25, then $20, then $15 and he decided he would rather make a sale than not). Mexico is funny for hagglers....I am normally not one but I caved in and bought the bracelet for $10.
On the way back through the east end of Tucson we continued east and saw a sign for Colossal Caves. Though we both are native Arizonan's and had seen this sign many times, the time for stopping was not there. Well, today was the day. I found that with my limited mobility for steps, they would customize a tour for me and just view one room, which limited the pressure on my foot braces with fewer steps. So, I did that and took a few photos. It was an interesting cave. Did you know that there are "living" caves and "dormant" caves? This one was a dormant one, which means no new formations are ongoing and there is no water present. In the other caves I have been in that were living it was waaaay cooler than the outside temps. In this one, it was about 45-degrees outside, and 70 inside! Strange!
Some of these layers over other layers are called "cave bacon"! I have seen these in other caves as well. Interesting nomenclature. No plans for tomorrow, but will be open for more serendipitous moments such as the cave today. I remain thankful for a husband who enjoys exploring and finding Serendipity where she may be!
I noticed a rosy glow to the west last evening and grabbed my camera and positioned myself behind one of the ponds here at the RV park. Check out the reflections.....
This was behind a second pond, as the sun set farther down the colors became rosier!
This was the final shot I took. These were not retouched in Photoshop, but I did use the "sunset" mode on the Olympus E-510, which biases the colors toward the reds and yellows. This isn't very far from what the colors were in real life, it was a great sunset!
We had a morning of exploration today, our second in the Benson area. Anyone who has passed eastbound from Tucson and Benson, heading toward New Mexico on I-10, has no doubt stopped at the wonderful rest stop at Texas Canyon. This is a rest stop built into some of the marvelous rocks and boulders that are part of the Dragoon Mountains. We have stopped there many times, but never traveled off the interstate to the roads behind. Today was our day to do that. We drove to a road that said it went to Cochise's Stronghold, and since we were off on an adventure we decided to check it out. This was a mountainous area in the Dragoon's where Cochise held off the troops since this area contains fortress-like rocks and peaks. He is said to be buried somewhere in these mountains.
These are some of the rocks that are typical of those in Texas Canyon; very huge, rounded blobs of rocks. Cool. huh?
While exploring the Texas Canyon area, we happened upon a guest ranch called Triangle-T and decided to check out what was there. We hoped the restaurant was open, but it was not to be, too early in the season for it to be open every day. What we did find was a nice RV park and guest ranch. They offer horseback tours and activities that sounded like fun. It would be interesting to go back for a few days and stay there.
