Last day of the Paint Out

Thursday morning we met at another privately owned ranch; this one has one of the longest stone walls in the county, and it was long!. There is alot of stone in this part of TX and the walls are amazing, as well as the homes built of it. Anyway, I set up my easel next to a fence with a couple of different views I was interested in doing. One held bulls (now I know that more than one bull is not normally in an area with other bulls, but I looked, and every "cow" I saw did not have udders, and that is all I know). I was not sure if wanted to paint them or the field or the hay, etc. so I sat down to start sketching to figure it out and my back was to the fence. Doesn't the horse look bucolic and perfectly peaceful? She is on the other side of the barn I am taking about. Well, animals are curious beings, and I was just too close to the fence and I am not paying attention and the next thing I know my hat has been lifted from my head and she is playing with it. I was able to retreive it, but she took it two more times out of my hands before I actually was able to keep it. It was a sad hat to begin with, and it has now entered into the "donkey hat" stage of its existence, as in only fit for. Llama kisses and horse thieves; who would have guessed?

Here is the photo I took of the "bull" pen. I hope I am not some ignorant northerner, but they still look like bulls to me.

I ended up doing a landscape in the morning of the fields with a live oak as the center of interest, from my spot by the fence, but I removed myself from close proximity and the horse lost interest. I think it is one of the better paintings I did this trip. Since I still had a half hour before we were heading to the Hilltop Cafe for lunch, and I had a lot of paint on my palette all ready to go, and two "cows" were now under the tree I had just painted, I did a quick study of them before they moved, so that if I wanted to put them in my painting, I had the reference to do so. It helped that I had just painted the tree.

After lunch (which was very good-Cajun fare) we headed to the "goat" farm, but truthfully, I don't know that anyone actually painted the animals. As has been the norm of the week, the wind was up, and it was hard to find shelter, but a few of us hung in there and painted anyway. I was under a tree with Kay and Louise at least trying to get out of the sun, and we all painted different scenes. I did not take a photo of the scene I decided to paint; I think because once we set up our gear, we had to paint holding on or else it would blow over. I am not kidding. My hat flew off and I could not retrieve it, because it was not worth loosing everything else for. I do have photos of the scene Kay painted as that was what originally drew my interest. Too funny.

Dinner was again hosted by Chuck and Barbara in their lovely home. Barbara not only made dinner but 5 fresh pies, cherry and apple. I had to try them both, as it was too hard to pick, and there were both excellent. We all had our paintings out for show and tell in Chuck's studio, and believe it or not, I didn't think to take any pictures. I had every intention of taking a group photo. Darn it. I am hoping that Leslie or Chuck took some photos that they will share.

Cynthia and I drove all day today, but we did go check up Palo Dura Canyon as was recommended by one of the artists yesterday. It was beautiful but again, too much wind, and I am quite beat up from all the wind so we did not stay to paint as we had planned to.