Vivid Waters

David and Coni and I decided to try painting up at the Alamosa River Canyon.  I love the canyon because of the diversity of views that are available.  The canyon is so steep and narrow that it is usually always shadowed on the south side which makes for great values in painting.  We were lucky... there wasn't too much wind and so we were able to paint.  

I originally had this view with a huge bank of snow sticking right out in the middle of the composition.  And it didn't work at all.  So with a few swipes of the brush - it was gone- and improved the composition greatly.  Sometimes you have to sacrifice parts of the painting that you really liked for the sake of the painting as a whole.

An Almost Fall Painting

Another painting from the Alamosa River Canyon.  This painting is a 16x20, a tad bit larger than I usually paint on location.  I was confused as to which direction was which and when the sun wasn't moving in the direction that I thought it should, I checked my compass in my Cruiser and found that I was 45 degrees off.  Oops.  Everything started to make sense after that and I finished this pretty quickly- larger plein air paintings can go as quickly as the smalls- just be ready to slap on large amounts of paint with a big brush - Stapleton Kearns was right- sometimes it's hard to miniaturize the world when painting.

In Pursuit of Fall

Rock Wall Up the Canyon

11x14

I headed up the Alamosa River Canyon with one thing on my mind " Fall Colors".  I was hoping that the colors would be changing up in the high country by now but, alas, the Aspens are for the most part just green- oh, there are a few golds here and there, but I will have to wait a few days and then try again. I saw this rock wall on the way up and have always thought about painting it and never have - until yesterday. The shadows were right and I dived in- it was a nice intimate scene and I was happy with the result.