It has been a long time!

It has been so long since I posted to this blog.  Sometimes life throws stuff at you and you have to stop what you are doing and slog your way through the quagmire of what it is you are dealing with that is out of your control.

"Destination - Mountain Pond"  oil 14 x 11

And then sometimes life changes drastically in ways you never dreamed it would.

"Beach Day at Bliss"  oil 12 x 16

I am now in that change mode which has gifted me some time to paint again.

"A Still Morning"  oil 12 x 16

I am going crazy painting...

"A Peaceful Cove"  oil 11 x 14

These were all "almost done but needed finishing touches or moderate changes."

"Tahoe Keys Spring" oil 12 x 16

My heart is where it belongs now - painting...

"Trail to Tallac" oil 12 x 16

 I hope this time to paint lasts and lasts and lasts.....

Gosh - a month slipped by! Yes - I have been painting!

Wow, life sure gets busy.  Here are some recent paintings I have done in the last month.  These are all on my website now and most are for sale.  The painting "Tracks to Pasture - Winters Ranch" was painted for the Nevada Land Trust and will be for sale at their fundraisers.

9 x 12 oil "Tracks to Pasture - Winters Ranch"

8 x 10 oil "Andreas Canyon Trail"

8 x 10 oil "Winter on the River"

14 x 11 oil "Warming the Snow"

8 x 10 oil "Slowed by Ice"

11 x 14 oil "Lagoon Reflections"

Two recent plein air paintings in oil....

I have been painting outside on location every week.  And these paintings have been drying in the studio and some of them I'd like to touch-up.  Sometimes when you paint outside, you think you get the values right and it looks OK there - outside - and then you come home and look at it indoors......and it looks so different!  Sometimes too dark, sometimes too light....funny.

Anyway, here are two that I did recently and have not touched up yet.

View of Jobe's Peak from Dangberg Ranch, Minden, NV

View of Mt. Tallac from Tahoe Keys

I just did a big, long post on the Reno Tahoe Plein Air Painters Blog.  Not pictures of me or my work so much, but great pictures of our day painting at different locations.  Check it out!

"Transcending Into Spring" pastel painting

9 x 12 pastel

This painting began plein air.  I began with a watercolor underpainting and then began to pastel over it.  At home, I continued painting, layer upon layer....using workable fixative between each layer.

This is a portion of Little Washoe Lake where the willows and marshes are.  The grasses were just beginning to poke up through the old dead, flattened grasses and the red stick willows were fading to a softer color.  I'll have to go back in a week or two and I bet the colors will be very different now that Spring is warming the air a little bit here in the high desert.