Estes Park- The Finale

I will cover the last two days in Estes Park- Friday and Saturday, mostly because on Friday we didn't paint AT ALL.... I know that is bad but were were exhausted and lazy too I guess.
First of all, I went to the Riverside Park to look for another view to paint for the quick draw and decided on another rock number:

I know this scene looks rather boring but I just liked the compositional elements in it- plus the fore cast was calling for rain on Saturday morning and I liked the value structure (rain would not be able to ruin the strength of values)
The rest of Friday consisted of going to Live and Andy Taylor's house. They are part time Estes Park residents and part time Taos residents and knew Peg- they were delightful- we had fun talking about old bands as they were heavily involved in the music industry and had great stories.
That evening we went to Coni's art show at Earthwood where she won people's choice .... Yay!!!!


OK now Saturday......
Quick draws make me extremely nervous.  It doesn't matter how prepared I am, it doesn't matter how fast I can paint- which is pretty fast.  I think it is the whole auction process after you are done  that turns the fear factor on.  I found out that I was drawn to be the first one auctioned off which made my stomach do flip flops.
I questioned my spot, should I change it or should I stay as the little waterfall in my rock feature had not turned on yet by 7:50 and I was worried.  Finally it started flowing and I committed myself to that spot.

The quick draw started at 8:30 am.
I do paint fast and when Dave Williams came by and I had the painting pretty well blocked in- I asked him the time- 9:00am.  I decided that I could take my sweet time and tweak things for a whole hour- and immediately relaxed. This is my painting:

I liked how this painting came out and that helped when hanging it on the auction rack...

Bidding was kind of slow at first but it sold to my new buddies Lucy and Jerry Ray from Texas- I was thrilled!  Woo hoo!

Later that evening was the show- I was pretty impressed with the whole event- it was extremely well run and  the show was very classy. There was wonderful food with a talented pianist playing for the entire evening.  The gallery at the Cultural Arts Council of Estes Park is beautiful and the lighting was wonderful.  I am a stickler for good lighting and I was impressed. And I had already made two sales at the beginning of the show!

The awards ceremony was held outside of the gallery under a white tent and I received an award for winning the poster competition- Yay! A big beautiful blue ribbon with some nice products from Richeson!

Here are a few pictures of the event:

Picture credit:  Charlie Bogusz

Here is a picture of Ulrich Gleiter, my friend from Germany, Lynda Vogel, the director of the Cultural Arts Council of Estes Park, and Charlie Bogusz, director of sales from plein air magazine. Uli won second place in the competition. Yay Uli! Susiehyer won best of show!  Beautiful painting!

Here is a picture of the group of painters- I'm hoping they are all in here:

The group- Plein Air Rockies 2011
Picture taken by Charlie Bogusz

Kelly Kotary, Susan McCullough, Ulrich Gleiter, susiehyer, Sterling Hoffman, and Peggy Immel
Some of the winners of events in  Plein Air Rockies 2011
Picture taken by Charlie Bogusz

Here is a picture of me with my painting Trail Ridge View- winner of the poster competition 2011

I met many new friends at Plein Air Rockies 2011.

This was such a wonderful event and I had such a great time- I hope I will have the chance to go again because it is definitely worth repeating.