Back Home Again; Plenty to Post, August 15, 2010

Colorado Vistas

After more than 3,000 miles of driving over twelve days, Sandi and I finally returned home late this evening.  I have plenty of watercolors to post–I managed to do seven of them during the trip.  Some have already appeared in their working stages, but today in Lubbock I put finishing touches to a number of them and thus will post them again.

My agenda in Colorado was to paint for the first time there en plein air. And my primary subject was going to be mountains.  I had hoped to paint stands of Aspen trees as well, but didn’t get that done.  If you’ve been following my blog, you already know that I did some sketches of Pike’s Peak, Crested Butte and the bluffs behind the town of Creede.  What is posted above is the result of a silly inclination that seized me on the final day that we left Colorado, with Sandi driving.  Sitting in the passenger seat, I was intoxicated at the endless passing of mountain ranges, so I giggled and pulled out my leather bag of watercolor supplies, opened a bottle of water, drew out a block, and began doing sketches of the mountain ranges as they passed us by.  I held the block in my lap and just continued to add mountain ranges, one ribbon at a time.  This is what finally emerged.  I cannot tell you where this location is, because it is the combination of ranges and meadows that I witnessed over a 3 1/2 hour drive from Almont to Salida to Canon City to Walzenburg to Trinidad to Raton Pass.  And I enjoyed every minute of the experimentation.

Thanks for reading.

Some Un-Photoshopped Watercolor Sketches, June 28, 2010

Cruise three

Cruise Two

Cruise One

Granlibakken cedar

Granlibakken evening

It’s been quite a conference at Lake Tahoe.  I’m here for the International Baccalaureate conference.  I packed my watercolor supplies hoping to create some on-site, plein air sketches.  An abundance of required classes, and several important planning meetings with my campus have all but squeezed out every opportunity.

But . . . I did steal some time.  The one titled “Granlibakken Cedar” I did first, this morning, between breakfast and the first class.  I only had 15 minutes, but there it is.  I also must add that I don’t have Photoshop capability here on my laptop, so the editing of these photos, taken under incandescent lighting conditions, leaves much to be desired.  There is indeed much more color on these pages than what appears on the blogsite.

The three cruise titles I did this afternoon while on a 90-minute cruise around Lake Tahoe.  This is my first attempt to paint snow packs on mountain ranges from life.  As you can see, #1 is very light and tentative, but  by the time I got to #3 I was starting to get a little more bold in color in contrast.  Incidentally, it’s also the first time I tried to paint a lake surface en plein air.

The one titled “Granlibakken Evening” was one I tried after dinner.  The light was fading, and again, I only had about 15 minutes to work on it before being called away to another campus planning meeting.

Thanks for reading.  I’m glad I got to do a little watercolor sketching while out in this beautiful location.  I’m also delighted to be included in International Baccalaureate–it comes to our campus Fall 2011.  I’m excited to take part.  I’ll be teaching the course Theory of Knowledge.

Tomorrow I fly back home and hopefully engage in some plein air work without distractions and interruptions.

Deaver Park in Arlington, Texas, May 19, 2010

Deaver Park, Arlington, Texas at sundown

Today I note with sadness that today marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of Alice Hochaday Monet, Claude Monet’s 2nd wife.  She urged him to “cling to his palette.”  So, after school today, I set off with my painting comrade Chris Toplyn and we took a look at Deaver Park during the setting sun.  The winds were unforgiving, blowing everything over, and flapping our watercolor pages.  But we enjoyed the quiet and the excitement of a landscape lighting up before our eyes.

A Surprise from my Files, January 21, 2010

Snowy Bourbon, Missouri with Railroad

A real surprise greeted me this evening as I looked through my old digital files of watercolors done in years past.  A few days ago, on January 17, I posted the right half of this painting, not knowing that the left half still existed in my files.  When I began converting my watercolors to 5 x 7″ greeting cards several years ago, I cropped this panorama composition so it would fit nicely on the standard-sized card, and completely forgot about the left hand of the composition.  The story of this subject is told in my January 17 blog, about my Christmas season surprise to see this beautiful snowscape in Bourbon, Missouri, early one morning as I was returning to Texas after a holiday visit with my St. Louis family.  This left-hand portion I did, trying to copy Edward Hopper’s oils and watercolors of railroad crossings and the embankments that partially obscure residential dwellings and small businesses.  I was trying to capture some of that when I worked out this composition.