A Short Fall

12x16

This was painted on one of the two days that the leaves were on the trees and colorful. I was glad that I took the time to paint this tree in my front yard a couple of weeks ago because sadly the freeze and winds shortened the color display tremendously. The mountains in the background are the Sangres - I painted them with as few strokes as possible- the light changed pretty quickly so I was moving fast.


I was planning on painting the Crestone paintout today but am feeling under the weather and as my son is home with the flu, I know better than to push it. Hopefully I will be able to get into the studio soon as I plan to have an open house around the 3rd week in November and need to get some paintings hung and would like to get some small pieces painted.

Color Studies

The other morning, the clouds to the north were so dark greyish blue and provided such a beauitiful back drop for the golden trees in my front yard- I had to paint them- I had just rained so I added some water reflections- they were perfect complements so...

I decided to do a study of complements in red and green- this is what I came up with- the color on this painting is a little of with my photographt....

I then decided to do a yellow and violet study -just for fun.

More Colorado Mountain Plein Air photos

The next day I drove to Salida and was invited to stay the night at Salley Mather's house. I met Sally down at the Steam Plant along the Arkansas River and she was set up and painting when I arrived. I looked around for awhile and settled on this nice little spot-- I am amazed at the pure zest that people in Salida have for their dogs.. I have never seen so many dog walkers in my life- and they all love their dogs dearly.I painted this along one of the dog walking trails- and there was always someone standing on the bridge. I pick this chap and sketched him in quickly.

Sally and I painted this scene from her house in the afternoon- clouds are kind of like trying to paint people and animals- always moving- just a little slower....This photo is darker than the actual painting as I can see some details are lost- my apologies.... later...

12x16
This was painted at Rock Creek - south of Monte Vista, Colorado. The colors will be changing soon so I decided it might be nice to get some summer paintings before it is too late. There were a few visitors to the area but I pretty much had the place to myself.

More Plein Air Paintings from Wyoming

The next day of the Wyoming Plein consisted of getting up very early in the morning and heading out to the Hereford Ranch, southeast of Cheyenne. The painting above is a painting of some of the buildings at the ranch - early morning. The painting on top is a sunset that was attempted by me again this year along highway 30- and it kicked my behind AGAIN!
Maybe next year...

Cloudscapes

After Coni and I got back from Taos And after talking to Kemper about paint application, I did this painting for fun- the pic above is a closeup of the painting below. I piled it on quite thick and truly liked this approach to clouds- my clouds have always been so wimpy from too thin of an application of paint. Not this time!

A Plein Air painting trip to Creede Colorado

Coni and I decided to go to Peggy Morgan Stenmark's show at the Creede repertory theatre. We also decided to turn it into a painting trip. This is a picture of the North Clear Creek Falls.

This is a picture of my cruiser sitting directly at the bottom of Bristol Mountain. I am standing at the edge of Santa Maria reservoir to take this.

Here is a picture of Sam Keith talking to Marsha and Tim Gallagher about art of course.

Peggy talking to a patron with her beautiful paintings in the background.

Another picture of Peggy- it was a very nice show. I love Peggy's ink resistant method in her paintings. Yes, we did paint and I will post that soon....

A Plein Air of San Francisco

Coni Grant and I needed to go to Antonito to pick up a few frames from our framer and so decided to paint the small church of San Francisco, Colorado which is southeast of San Luis. I have painted this church before - at the end of winter and nearly froze to death. Well this time the weather was much more pleasant and we found a great high viewpoint of the church from the cemetery. This church has been painted quite extensively by artists and I noticed an ad in one of the art journals( I can't remember which) by Walt Gonske - a painting of this church which will be in the Prix de West.

Dancing Trees at Dusk

This small 6x8 painting was done very quickly as the sun was setting. I was trying to paint as fast as the mosquitos were trying to bite me. I finished quickly and ran inside.

Wind at the Sand Dunes

My brother and his girlfriend came to the Valley for a visit and decided they wanted to go to the dunes . As it has been raining almost everyday, I thought well, we'll see how bad they really want to go. The day scheduled for the dunes visit was Friday and not your typical dunes weather but they wanted to go anyway. I decided to not climb the Sand Dunes so I painted. I and the mosquitos took refuge from the wind in some trees and this is what I painted... I was lucky I finished this before the rains came.

Poppies

"Poppies" 8x6
Well the San Luis Valley has been unusually cold this year and with that, all the flowers are blooming later. The poppies were blooming and I knew that I needed to get them painted since I like to do at least one poppy painting per summer. This is quite a small painting- the flower beds are beautiful thanks to my wonderful daughter for putting in the effort to eradicate ALL of the weeds and making them such a joy to look at.

My painting studio

This is the barn directly behind my studio- love it!

I planted some lavender right next to my sidewalk that goes to the back entrance of my studio. You do know it is a cardinal rule that painters have to have lavender planted outside their studios-- right?

These poor trees just didn't get enough water before I moved in - I will probably have to get them trimmed soon.

My studio- the grass is starting to fill in which you would think was amazing if you saw the pictures of this grass last year about this time- so progress really has been made.

I did this painting very quickly before going to a Taos plein air PAAC paintout. The location is very close to San Antonio Mountain - probably right on the New Mexico border. A storm was brewing and gave some great atmosphere to the scene.

Arroyo Hondo

This is a painting of Our Lady of Sorrows Church at Arroyo Hondo - what a cool village! We were going to paint this church at the fire station with Patrice but they were working on the fire engines and we would have been completely in the way so we sat up directly in front of the church and painted. I can see a few tweeks will need to be made with this one- but not too many...

The Taos Gorge

The fun about paintouts is going to places and learning about where the good views are that we would never find otherwise-thanks to Patrice, Kemper and Peg. Coni and I followed out little map and ended up at this beautiful spot on the country club road on the south side of Taos. It looks as if there are quite a few people that use this area for target practice but they weren't up as early as the painters. This is a 16 x 12 and was just getting finished up when Coni came by and said the wind was blowing horribly over by her view and so we packed up- heading for the Ranchos de Taos and setting out for a different view as we have painted there before. We knew the wind would be an issue so were hoping for the best.

Small Caboose

Coni and I decided to go to Alamosa and paint next to the trains, power plant, and cool junk area. We saw this cute little caboose sitting on the tracks and decided to paint it. There was one problem-- a huge fence between us and the caboose making it very hard to get the detail. This is basicallly as much as I could see- so there is not a lot of detail in this painting and it was a trying process for me. When I haven't painting for awhile such as being on a long vacation, I have a difficult time painting plein air for the first few paintings- almost as if the experience of painting is foreign to me. I will be posting small stories about my trip to Spain, Paris and London later. It was a whirlwind trip and was exhausting. But I loved it-more about that later....

Sicker than a Dog

Well it was my daughter's 18th birthday on Sunday and I really wanted to have a party for her- and was not feeling well at all. I dragged myself to the kitchen to make her requests; fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and banana split desert. I doped myself up pretty well with Tylenol cold medication and Mucinex- as I have learned that mucous truly is my enemy. I made it through the dinner- not with blazing colors but I survived. After the guests left and I immediately retired to bed; somewhere in or out of consciousness I thought "I am sicker than a dog."

Then I thought- have you ever really seen a sick dog? Most dogs I see look pretty healthy - even when I've seen some pretty bad places in foreign countries- the dogs always look pretty happy albeit skinny. The only dog that remember seeing sick was my husband's dog Max. Max was a big, happy black lab that had a terrible habit of sniffing crotches all the time. He also had a habit of gorging himself at dinner time- especially if he got any scraps from the dinner table. Well, we were newly married and I gave him a bunch of scraps to eat and he was fat and happy in the carpeted utility room. All of a sudden I heard this horrible sound and ran to the utility room to find I was too late- he had thrown up everything all over the carpet and now was preceding to eat it AGAIN!!! Yuck!! I threw him outside and cleaned up the slimy mess- and he was left outside for the day.

I really haven't been around that many sick dogs but I think they are usually much healthier than people- I wonder where that saying came from?

I feel much better today but not well enough to paint- sorry......

Going to Havasu

Well, It was time to go back through the desert as my husband wanted to go to Havasu to look for property to purchase so it was a rather deja vu experience for me to traipse back across the desert again. It was a fun experience but an extremely quick trip. I got some great shots traveling along in nice weather- when you're on the road for 10 and a half hours you try to find things to do and taking pictures fits the bill better than anything else. I tried to read but I get carsick if I read too much. Consequently I did not go painting this week and so I don't have much to post at this time. Well, that's not entirely true- Coni and I tried to paint on Friday but that is another story......

Plein Air at Rock Creek

Coni and I were planning on painting at Rock Creek since there is quite a bit of snow but yet the roads are plowed since there are individuals that live there year around- but she called and cancelled because she had some deadlines to take care of. I decided to go painting by myself which all of a sudden seemed kind of strange since I hadn't been painting by myself for quite awhile. Rock Creek is beautiful- lots red rock cliffs.... I was painting this scene with my back to the red rock cliffs and a little thought went through my head-- I bet this is mountain lion territory- ooooh...

I remember hearing stories about how quiet mountain lions are and so every now and then I would look over my shoulder ---just to check- you never know. Then I thought- it might be wise to look for tracks just to see if any were in the area- well I didn't see any so I went back to painting. I never did see a mountain lion but it's funny how your mind starts playing little tricks on you and you just feel slightly uneasy. It's rather hard to concentrate on painting when you are looking over your shoulder all the time as well..

Matt Smith Workshop- Day One

The first day of Matt's workshop consisted of morning lecture as he talked about values, color, shapes and trying to create excitement on the canvas. He talked about color selections and told us the colors he uses in the field.

He did a very nice demo from a picture and he worked it like magic- made it look easy too- which fired me up for painting in the field that afternoon..

We ended up going to Lost Dog Trail with beautiful views all around and everyone started to work. Matt's only warning was "watch where you are walking and don't walk into the jumping cactus which will burrow into your feet and will be extremely difficult to get out."

I decided to walk back to the Cruiser to get my camara (why do I forget these things?) and I walked into some cactus. I spent some time trying to pull pieces of cactus out of my socks and then decided I better get to painting.

I was about halfway through the painting when Matt came around to see what I was up to. First of all, the cactus on the left side of the painting was really quite large and he said it overpowered my canvas so he cut it down to size. And then he said "Um, Sue" and I said "Yes Matt, " and he said "You put your cactus right in front of that mountain over there- and that mountain happens to be a landmark around here- it's called Camelback Mountain and important to people - you really shouldn't do that." Oops!

More tomorrow.......