I am in Colorado, camping with my large extended family on my brother’s 80 acres. He and his wife have a beautiful home here, and it needed a ramp. So, my brothers and nephews added a ramp to the house entrance today to make it more accessible. While they worked, I sketched them.
The San Miguel Mountains are a well-known backdrop to Telluride, Colorado. They rise to the east above Telluride and are so massively high that even hours after sunrise, they cast a strong shadow on themselves and the town below. The shadow is almost like a curtain; it nearly blocks all the light on the mountains. Then, as the sun rises, the shadow lifts, revealing the rich alpine landscape.
I painted about a mile west of the town, in the space where the shadow was being replaced by the sunlit leaves of the cottonwoods, willows, and grasses.
I painted on the ski slopes of Mountain Village, Colorado, today and spent some time relearning how to mix greens—bright yellow greens, warm mossy greens, blue greens, distant greens, shaded greens, and muted greens. There are so many beautiful greens in this part of Colorado!
We drove across California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, singing those great songs from our youth, camping along the way, and enjoying each other’s company.
The Thursday painters went to San Diego’s Balboa Park. There is a place along a canyon filled with eucalyptus trees where you can stand and look across to the International Cottages. This is one of several views in the park where the technical challenge is beyond me, but I keep trying to paint it anyway. I keep coming back because I like how the cottages look mysterious and distant and the variation in the eucalyptus trees.
I love the black spots on the wings of mourning doves; perhaps I over-exaggerated them.
Walking the Dog: I painted this at an urban park in San Diego, but wanting to focus on the figure and dog, did not include the soccer goals or the trolley that runs through it. Now, it looks more like a setting in the Rocky Mountains than a California city park.
Deliberate Sketching 