Frontrange Foothills - Fall    9x12    oil on panel

Yesterday (10-24-11) I went over to Matthews/Winters park to work on a small project I started last December. I painted this same picture last winter and have come back again in the summer (see below) and now in the fall to do it again. I thought it might be neat to paint the same spot in all the different seasons. The colors are a little off in the pic above... the mountain in back is a little too blue in the photo. It is more grey/tan in the painting. I just need a version in the snow and one in the spring and I'll be done. We got almost no snow last winter and hopefully we will get more this year so I can do the snow version. Note in the summer version I forgot to put the little pine tree in that is almost in the middle of the painting. Don't know why I did that. Maybe I just forgot to do it. It was super hot that day (95 or so), so I'm gonna blame it on the heat. Also note in the early winter painting, I removed the actual tree that's there on the left. I didn't want to paint a leafless tree at the time (I find them fairly depressing) so I grabbed a pine tree that is just to the left of the area in the painting and planted it in the same spot. I also felt at the time that there was too much grey and tan in the painting and it needed some relative, stronger color. Green seemed to work just fine since it is really there, just not at that spot.

Summer

 Early winter

Sunset Study - October    6x8    oil on panel

On Sunday evenings I go over to a nearby Open Space to paint sunset lighting with a few other painters. Sometimes I paint the effect of the light on the trees and bushes and sometimes the sky. The challenge here is to capture what you see before it changes or disappears. At this time of day, the colors change so fast that once you identify a color, look down to mix it, and look up again, it's gone. So it requires a little mixing of colors before you arrive so you don't have to do it on the fly. The only problem with that is that no two sunsets are alike. It's taken me about a month of Sundays to start to figure out what to expect. This little study came out pretty good but the clouds are off. I was trying to anticipate what color they would turn into and went a little dark. 

Fall Light    9x12    Oil/Panel

Yesterday was the weekly PAAC paintout in the Castle Rock area. We went to a ranch called the Wilson Acreage south of Castle rock. It was a big place and there was a painting to be made every direction you looked. I could go back there many times and always find something new and fresh to paint. This little scene is out by their creek which runs through a hay field. It was a nice young Cottonwood grove and it had a great, quiet feel to it. The creek is just to the left of the panel. This field is also home to some stabled horses. They are super friendly and very curious. They loved the smell of my turpentine and they all wanted to get a quick whiff. The weather was fantastic and the colors were great. In the past I would have shied away from this type of scene because the amount of detail is so high. But I just could not resist trying it and I'm glad I did. This is one of the few paintings I have done this year that totally brings me right back the the time and place I painted it. I can still smell the fall leaves, hear the creek and whooping cranes, and hear and smell the horses. What a great day!