mountains
Next Entries »Bird’s Eye
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Bird’s Eye, Banff, Alberta, Canada, 11H x 11W x 3D inches acrylics on canvas, wrapped sides painted. Frame unnecessary. Hang on a wall or display on a flat surface. Signed on the side so as not to impose on the composition.
Progress thumbnail images below:
Painting facelift
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
Started April 7th this year, Rocky Mountain Vista received a face lift this week before I brought it in to be judged for a local exhibition. There are subtle but positive improvements compared to when I posted it as finished on April 13th. Progress can be reviewed on the April 9th blog post. It is now well and truly finished!
Not available. Donated to VAST Arts, Denton, TX.
Rocky Mountain Vista finished
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
Rocky Mountain Vista 48H x 24W x 2D inches, acrylics on canvas, wrapped sides painted, detail images.
Left: Complete image. Paintings that are proportionately longer than wider don’t photograph well or show impressively on screen, so this has been split into three separate detail images.
Progress on Rocky Mountain Vista
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
Rocky Mountain Vista, 48H x 24W inches acrylics on canvas after one more day of work, still in progress and almost finished.
Rocky Mountain Vista started
Monday, April 7th, 2008
Started last night, work in progress: Rocky Mountain Vista 48 x 24 inches acrylics on stretched canvas.
Takkakaw Falls
Saturday, January 12th, 2008
Takkakaw Falls, Yoho Valley, B.C. 830 feet high, said to be the most impressive waterfalls in North America next to Niagara. 12H x 9W inches graphite, watercolors, based on antique Vandyck photos of the Canadian Rockies. Study only, not available
Mt. Assiniboine
Friday, January 11th, 2008
Mt. Assiniboine, about forty miles southwest of Banff, Alberta. 12H x 9W inch watercolor and graphite, study only, not available.
I inherited some charming antique books of hand-colored “Vandyck Photogravures” of Canadian Rocky Mountains scenery as it was at the turn of the twentieth century. The monotone sepia and few other pale colors add such a warmth to the already beautiful scenery in the 1910 photographs, and since I haven’t tried watercolors for years, I thought they would make perfect studies.
Gold In The Mountains 01
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
Gold In The Mountains 01, finished – 20H x 16W inches acrylics on canvas. Has 28H x 24W inches dark-stained antique frame with gold trim
Started late in 2005, Gold In The Mountains 01 has evolved through many changes to achieve the finished painting above. The first thumbnail shows the painting at a stage where I thought it finished so entered it into Artjury.com’s 2006 Spring/Summer online exhibition. It was accepted, and at the time I liked the larger areas of flat orange-gold, but about six months later I thought the work needed more depth, and the dark branch across the upper portion stood out, so I began a long process of scrubbing off, building back up, scraping and layering paint, repainting, etc. The piece reached a few different stages where it could have been called finished, but I was not entirely pleased, so kept searching. Here are a few stages in the transformation of Gold In The Mountains 01:
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Gold In The Mountains 02
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
Gold In The Mountains 02, Kananaskas Valley, Alberta, Canada, 11H x 14W oil pastels on paper, 3-inch-wide white double mat and 26H x 22W inch white custom-built white wood frame with crackle finish.
Aspen / Poplar trees in the Rocky Mountains during Autumn display large yellow-gold leaf masses, represented here with strokes in a diagonal direction. Textures in varying directions add interest, as in tree trunks marked vertically across the entire page, grounding the drawing as a whole with regard to composition. The green-black portion displays the vertical growth of evergreens. Horizontal strokes were appropriate for the mountain, with the golden glow of distant poplars softening its nature and place it back in distance.