Split Mountain, Dinosaur National Park UT

We did a family trip to Colorado with a day trip to Utah to see Dinosaur National Park. The weather was uncertain which made for difficult photography. I was able to use an image of this colorful rock formation as inspiration. The formation is called Split Mountain Canyon. This is the Green River. This is a studio painting in oil.

St Francis of Assisi Church, Taos NM

Another watercolor from our Santa Fe trip. We did a day trip to view the Spanish churches between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. This is the back end of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi. Well known from black and white photography by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, and also painted by Georgia O'Keefe. This was done plein air, interesting experience as it was about 85 degrees in the sun and the paper kept drying out while I was trying to do watercolor washes.

Wisconsin Farm

I thought I would share "one from the vault". This is a watercolor/goache painting that I did before I started taking watercolor lessons. As you can see, the general "look" of the watercolor style is already formed, but the technique was uneven. I used the opaque watercolor to correct problems.

Sand Dunes and Storm

This is from our trip to Santa Fe in early 2009. This was a experimental studio piece, where I used a black and white photograph as reference. I like the abstract shapes of the dunes against the naturalistic sky.

Fall Color, Colorado

We enjoyed a trip in late 2008 to Colorado. We did a day trip to Cripple Creek and caught fall color on the aspen trees. They are interspersed with pines, so there is more of a speckled effect than masses of color, except near meadows.