Banks of the Poudre in May

We live about five miles from the beautiful Cache la Poudre River in Fort Collins, right in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  One of the fun things that we can do is plein air paint almost any day of the year and create paintings of scenery that is beautiful.  Last May a bunch of us went with Master Pastelist, Lorenzo Chavez, over to the Poudre River to plein air paint. It was a beautiful, clear day and we set up on the river banks and painted. For lunch we went to Vern's Cafe which is a great good ol' boy Cafe with homemade cinnamon rolls and low calorie stuff like that. Since it was the day before my birthday one of the guys ordered a big cinnamon roll with candles on it for me and they all sang, loudly, Happy Birthday to me. Wow, that was embarrassing...and fun, some of the people in the restaurant sang along just for the fun of it! Great day!! This painting will be in the Jack Richeson Book, Pastels 75. It should be out soon, I am anxious to see it, I have three paintings in the book.

Inside the Loveland Greenhouse, 11 x 14 Pastel

Last fall we had an unusually cold, windy, really nasty day and instead of painting the outdoors plein air we moved into the Loveland Greenhouse. I really had a hard time deciding what to paint, I enjoy plants but this sea of green was too much even for me. At the back of the greenhouse they had this really nice umbrella set up, and I just loved the look of it so I parked my easel in front, added a couple of nice plants with the grass and painted happily away. This is one of my favorite paintings, I think I just love umbrellas, even though opening them inside is supposed to be bad luck!
Altogether I had a great week. This painting, as well as two others, were chosen for the Jack Richeson "Pastels 75" book which will be published in the next few weeks. The Western Spirit Show curator called and asked me to do the Quick Draw before the opening and I was really excited to accept. Quick Draw is a 45 minute drawing from start to finish and framed!! So, obviously, I will have to have my pastels "ducks" in a row for this one. You can't dawdle with a few hundred people watching!

Lake Loveland at Dawn, Pastel

WATCHING DOUG DAWSON, MPSA, DEMO
Last Saturday I had the opportunity to watch a demo by one of the greatest pastelists of our times, Doug Dawson of Wheatridge, CO. He is a Master Pastelist in the Pastel Society of America and gave us a wonderful demo. In an hour and a half I wrote three pages of notes. Some of the information he emphasized was looking and relooking at the big shapes. He also talked about weaving one color throughout all the colors of the weaving (painting) to unify it. I thought this was a wonderful concept, using the analogy of weaving, you could really picture this working.
He talked about using toned paper, he uses pink for overcast days and yellow gold for a sunny day.
He did a really brave thing and had each one of us in the room pick out a color and he used all of them to do a painting of a big tree in front of a background of other trees. It was very interesting to see how he brought it all together with something like thirty colors being used!
Doug has a new book out so be sure and check it out if you can. I have his first book which I think I've had for almost 20 years.

Bales Aglow--Western Spirit Show

In case you think this looks familiar, this is the finished painting that I did the study for in the posting I did of the Small Painting Show. The study is 6 x 8 and this painting is 20 x 24.

I like this painting, it speaks to me in so many ways of my childhood, life in North Dakota and our farm in Southwestern North Dakota. Today I painted all day and it seems like I always go back to farm and landscape scenes. Today I worked on a winter scene in the "Russian Style"...rough strokes of oil on linen, fun and entirely different from pastel painting. Keeps my short attention span on track!

National Juried Western Spirit Show

I am excited that two of my paintings were accepted into the 2009 Western Spirit Show in Cheyenne. I haven't applied for this show before so it was really nice to get two paintings in. My Bales Aglow which is a 20 x 24 pastel and my Arches at San Jose Mission pastel painting which is 24 x 36. The Bales painting is such a reiteration of my childhood in North Dakota...even though our bales there were rectangular...very heavy....and awkward.

The San Jose Mission is in San Antonio and when Dale had a conference there a couple of years ago I went along and decided I would photograph all the Missions. Well, that turned out to be a little more than I could do, but I did take three rolls of film with my Fuji Advantix camera. I still really like to use that camera, it takes wonderful photos.I have to admit that I like the flexibility of being able to take many photos and delete the ones with my thumb in the middle!

The Western Spirit Show is in Cheyenne, WY, from March 7 to April 19, 2009. The opening reception is March 7, 2009, from 6 to 9 pm in Cheyenne Frontier Days "Old West Museum". You need to make reservations, it's a great opening...hope to see YOU there!

Winter

As usual going into a New Year, I plan my goals for the following year. This year it's much harder for some reason, maybe the general apathy I feel after my Dad's death this year has made me less driven. Anyway, I have decided to paint animals this year, Herefords in honor of my Dad. He loved his Herefords and he picked them for their "conformation", something I never quite got the feeling of. So, this year I am going to study our cattle from old photos and paint some of them grazing and at their winter feeding station.
Feeding them in Southwestern North Dakota in the winter was a challenge that most people will never know. Lucky them! Sometimes it took us as long to get dressed to go out to feed the cattle as it did to feed them. I can remember my Mom and I getting dressed up in our "storm coats" as she called them. My arms would barely bend with all the layers. The scarf around your mouth would immediately freeze at 30 to 38 below zero. It was a real scary time, the water in the tank had to be heated and broken through for the cows and the calves. We had to haul out the bales, some of which were pretty tightly frozen and packed together. The great life of a farmer/rancher in North Dakota! Wow.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

It's very cold here in Colorado, but the sun is peeking out. I am working on reorganizing my studio. Today my friend Nancy helped me out putting pastels in a new cabinet I bought at the flea market for $95.00. It has eleven drawers in it and they are lined with red velvet! It is a new cabinet made by a local handyman for jewelery but it works great for pastels. It is extremely heavy and now it is probably close to 80 pounds with my pastels in it. Pastels are so expensive I wanted a case for them where they would get so dusty and messed up.