The Morning Crowd

This herd of elk (wapiti) greeted me this morning when I got up.  If you look back in my postings to the painting "Night Passage" this is in that same view.  ( I wasn't making it up about the deer in "Night Passage".)  Usually it is mule deer out there but today was a special treat. 

I am working on some deadlines and larger paintings right now and haven't been able to post as much.  Hope to get back to it soon.

Popeye!

My son loves to play "popeye" as well as "slug bug".   A game where you punch others, in the shoulder, when you see a car with a headlight out.  Slug Bug is similar but it is when you see a VW Bug.  In my son's particular game, the rules can sometimes change, suddenly, and new things can be added.  I have advised him this could go badly for him!

The Zippo Challenge

This is another Daily Paintworks Challenge, this time lead by member Michael Naples.  We were challenged to paint a photo of a zippo lighter in only burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and white.  This is a great way to learn working in a limited palette.  Anders Zorn also worked in a limited palette of black, red, yellow ochre and white.  This keeps the artist from getting too "happy" with those wonderful bright colors we have available today.  I chose to do the image cropped to highlight the industrial design aspect of the working end of these lighters, which I found appealing.

Hanging Rose

This is another entry in the Daily Paintworks Challenge, hosted this week by Qiang Huang.

I have been a little slow at getting this entry in.  This rose has been waiting in my studio since last Sunday and was starting to look rather sad.  Hanging, helped counter that droopy look that it was starting to take on.

Night Passage

Last night a couldn't sleep, I heard the dog whining, I hadn't fed or put her up.  As I walked to her pen I was blown away with the night sky.  These beautiful fluffy clouds rimmed with white from the moon, floating in a dome of stars.  Though the deer weren't right there last night, I had seen them trailing across our field like this many times before.

My life has been in chaos lately, so I haven't been posting as much.  I hope to get back at it soon.

Sunrise in Paradise Valley

I did this from a photo I took when visiting my old home in Paradise Valley, MT.

Strawberry

My son got some strawberries yesterday and I thought they were too pretty not to paint one.   I sat it on an old canvas carrier I found in an antique store.

Sunset Memory

I've had an awful headache today so I only painted a little.  I decided to do a memory painting since I have seen Sonya Johnson and Mark Hanson do one.  Obviously, their memories are better than mine.  I did this very small and quick.

Snow Goose

This beast is called the Galloping Goose, this one resides in downtown Dolores.  These were used to take mail and passengers up to mining towns like Ophir, Rico and Telluride.  They are kind of a combination of old truck and train car, a wonderful glimpse into Colorado's past.

Cherry Swirl

This is the next in the Daily Paintworks Challenge - The 10 minute challenge.  We are to do about 8 small squares of just ONE subject.  Each square should only be 10 minutes.  This has been a great practice and it was HARD not to get bogged down.  Oooh, that Carol is tough, but a great teacher!  The first two I got some of the cherry or shadow color tracked into the background color so they were a little over but the last was probably 7 minutes.

Brown Trout sketch

I have been working on a larger painting the last two days but I am not happy with it and am too embarrassed to post it.  

Instead I will post another old drawing of mine.  This sketch was for the Illinois Lake Michigan Salmon Stamp, I think 2005.  This is the preliminary drawing to be ok'd for the finished work.  I learned that this is more of a "river" type of Brown Trout.  Lake run Browns are less spotted, mostly silver bodies with dark blue/black on top of the dorsal area.  Since I wasn't lucky enough to catch one myself, the conservation guys sent me a photo of a behemoth Brown they brought up.  I am guessing somewhere just over 20 inches.  Those conservation guys have all the fun.

Scattered Snow Showers

The title pretty much sums up the day.  It is bitter cold today and the wind wasn't helping that any.  I was lucky enough to paint this view out my front window.   Mesa Verde was shrouded in the background by a huge snowstorm.

The photograph could be better but my eyes kept tearing up from the cold so that I couldn't see, I settled on this one.

The Diehard

I love to fish, but this fella really loves to fish.  He was ice fishing during a snowstorm at Summit Lake.