Waterfalls-Some recent works.

Currently, I am trying to master painting moving water in watercolor.  My daughter, when seeing some of my paintings, suggested we make the short trip to Fish Creeks Falls, just outside of Steamboat Springs.  We packed a picnic lunch, drove up the mountain, unloaded Eliza and Walter (the dog) and gingerly made our way down a rather steep trail to the bottom of the falls.

 

"Gingerly" because my daughter had just the day before been released from bedrest, but told to "take it easy" by her doctor as she had made it to 37 weeks in a high risk pregnancy with twins.

Taking the easy trail back to the car

 The next day, Alethea stayed in bed, Eliza took a rare nap at preschool, and I worked on some paintings of waterfalls that I had begun before our little outing.

"Logjam" is a bit more abstract than my normal style, but I like the upper falls.

"Cascade" is a little more colorful than I had planned, but I liked the pallette so much that I painted the forest scene below using similar colors.

 In the next painting, I took some photos of the progress of the painting to show you how the work evolved.

Blocking in the main elements.  After this I covered the white areas with masking fluid before working on the water.

Here I have rubbed off the masking fluid and added some stronger blues to the water.

Here the painting is almost done, but I think I will go back and tone down the brown in the tree on the left with a wash of purple.  It seems to draw too much attention to itself when the movement of the water is where I want  the focus of the painting to be.

 

 Tomorrow we will meet "da brudders",  Eliza's names for her baby brothers.  Alethea will have a C-section the morning.  I expect that I will be too busy to paint Fish Creek Falls anytime soon, but I have a lot of reference photos to work from and hope to return to do a little plein air painting before the snow flies next fall.

How Close Is To Close -- To An Alligator?

For Holy Week I traveled to New Orleans with a group of teenaged girls and two other adults on Pilgrimage.  In addition to visiting many religious sites, we made a trip into the swamps to learn about tidal basin ecology as part of our responsibility as Christians to be stewards of creation.  It (blessedly) was a cool cloudy day and all the creatures of the swamp where quite active...except the mosquitoes which did not seem to be much of a problem even to Pat.  Pat swears that mosquitoes come from miles away just to bite her!  Here is a little photo tour for you...

A Fairy House?

What...you want to see alligators?

Ummm!  Don't get so close!

Don't Turn Your Back to Him!

Ladies, really, I think they can jump at least three feet!

Oh, phew, he is moving away.  But there is still lots to see...

Hey, we have thistles in New Mexico too!

But no Spanish Moss

Oh dear, these guys are everywhere!