Monday, June 22, 2015

Rocky Mountain Autumn














"Rocky Mountain Autumn', acrylic 24 x 36
Seeing as I have a lot of winter scenes, I had to paint an autumn scene to add to my repertoire of paintings for The Stampede Western Art Show. Along with my imagination, and a couple photos, I mainly used a  photo of a previous painting for reference.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Bear Bottoms

















'Bear Bottoms', acrylic 36 x 48 inches. Many thanks again to Wendy Chambers for allowing me to use her photos as reference for my paintings! Wendy works for the Northern Lights Wildlife Society, which is dedicated to give injured and/or orphaned wildlife a second chance at survival, and relies solely on the generous donations of others. For more information on this organization please visit their very interesting and informative website, website

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Moody Sisters








The 'Three Sisters' are the iconic mountains of Canmore Alberta and probably one of the most photographed. I had never painted them. So this morning effort is 'Moody Sisters', acrylic 18 x 36. I struggled whether to make it a warm or cool painting and adding more misty clouds or not. After applying warms glazes and then cool and back and forth again and adding clouds and taking them away,some pretty neat marks,texture and depth were emerging. Very hard to see all the nuances in the photo though.....come to Stampede to see it!

Sunday, June 14, 2015

The Bearoness






















This is the largest bear I have ever done. 'The Bearoness',acrylic 48 x 38. I painted her based on a smaller previous painting. Looks can be so deceiving, and I wouldn't want to get too close. I had the pleasure of video taping a beautiful young black bear ambling along the side of the road eating dandelions.
video

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Wild Beauty






















It's been a couple of years since I have painted horses, and I painted horses a lot when I first moved to Calgary. It's Stampede time and I'm frantically trying to get ready. 'Wild Beauty', 48 x 36 inches.This wild stallion is from the Alberta foothills and many thanks to Linda Vick for letting me use her photo.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Johnston Canyon



















I went to Johnston Canyon with three fellow artist friends for a few days of Plein Air painting. We stayed in a cabin at the lodge near the falls. My knee problems prevented me from venturing to the upper falls but I did manage the lower falls and did a bit of hiking around Moraine Lake. I took tons of reference photos!

The weather took a turn for the worse and painting on location, for me, was out of the question. Although I did paint out side the cabin under the deck....does that count as Plein Air? I managed to start three paintings from the photos I took the day before. I touched them up in the studio. Still not sure I'm done with them yet. acrylic 18 x 24