One Hour of Fun with Gesso

First, my big announcement! I spent the last two days rearranging and reorganizing my studio and it is so much better now! I didn't have the heart to even come in here and try to paint since I couldn't find anything and it would have used up all of my motivation and inspiration just to clear a space and find something I needed. It was bad! So, now I am ready to go, and this is the result.

Last week I gesso-ed over two failed paintings on Arches paper, while they were still on the boards. Today, I had an hour to play and that led to this painting. I just kept using my bedraggled cutter brush with half the hairs missing (great for foliage texture!) and lifting and dabbing until I quit at this point. In self-critiquing this, I see the my atmospheric perspective is off and, even though this mountain stream did tumble downhill I think I have it too much that way. Oh well, it is what it is at this point. Since the paper has gesso on its surface, I may go in and change the course of that upper part of the stream, but maybe not. It served its purpose of getting me back into the studio and actually using it as a studio instead of a storage room for everything I didn't know where to put elsewhere. Bad Susan!

Mendenhall Ice Floes

This was one of the two August projects for the Watercolor Workshop this month. I actually did both of the projects, the first time this year I think! The theme was to paint something that looked cool, and this fit the bill the best I could find. Not my greatest work, but passable to show I am actually painting some now. I wish I was there right now...we have had record-breaking heat this week and it really is hard to make ourselves go outside for anything.

A Green Project by Aubrey!

This is a painting, by my Aubrey, on cardboard ( to reduce, reuse and recycle!) As you can probably tell, it is of a car and painted using the brushes I sent to her recently.

Go Aubrey...you recycle and you rock!

G'Ma

August Project For WcW

This is my submission for the Watercolor Workshop August project, which is where we all paint from one photo, provided this month by Jane James. It is supposed to be depicting something "cool" while we all fight the heat this summer. Unfortunately, I just cannot force myself to mix cool greens and blues! I seem always to reach for the warm golds and go with that.

This is supposedly a scene in Maine, I have never seen this kind of pine tree so was not sure I depicted it correctly.

Silverton to Ouray

After weeks of not working on this, I finally finished it yesterday while painting with the Thursday afternoon watercolor group. We critiqued this and deemed it finished. Now, on to painting.....what?

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.