Wyoming

Tuesday, September 1st, Marie and I joined a friend of hers, Donna Lyons, who was taking some of her students on a plein air mini trip to Sarasota, WY. Everyone but me lives in Grand County, so I drove up and stayed with Marie Monday night for the early 8:00 a.m. start time. We drove up Hwy 125 through North Park, stopping for a morning painting at a Nature Preserve along the road.
I did two small paintings; the one above left of Rabbit brush (8"x6"and the one to the right with the sage, 9"x12"). The painting of the sage would benefit for a bit stronger color in the Sage where the light is hitting it. It is looking a bit washed out to me now.

Tuesday, it took me most of the morning to settle down to painting after driving around like I was lost, looking for inspiration. I settled on painting some buildings in town. Not my best work, but I painted and sometimes that is good enough in itself. This is 11"x14." I would like to try painting this one again in the studio from this study and my photo reference. I was trying to prep myself for the Golden Triangle Museum District 3rd Annual Paint Out that starts tonight and runs through September 21st. I messed up on the perspective of the little yellow building and I also do not think it "reads" well as being in the shade. Yellow in shade is very tough to get for me without losing the "yellow" color.

Marie met up with me for lunch and then we drove out of town on one of the county roads to paint hay in the fields. It was definitely haying season in the back country. I did the painting of part of a hay fence with the rabbit brush on a slope first (above to the right, 10"x8"), more for the colors and to catch the light and then turned my easel around and did a second painting of the hay in the field (11"x14"). I would like to also do this painting larger and put in the tractor that came along to pick up the hay bales just as I was finishing up. The road into the field is to the right of the fence in the painting. I feel like I lost the shapes of the foreground bushes in this piece and the rabbit brush doesn't read very well either. For all the practice in the previous days work I had you would think they would have been a no brainer for me.

I did two more paintings but I am not sure I want to post them. Marie and I drove home via the Medicine Bow Wilderness Scenic Byway and we did stop to paint. I had fun painting my little piece at Mirror Lake, but I see too many things wrong with it to post it.