Virtual Paintout, June 2013 - The Azores

 Begin

 Street View - a lake in the Azores    oil on prepared panel    5" x 7"

The June 2013 Virtual Paintout

is on one of nine Azore islands in the North Atlantic west of Lisbon, Portugal. 

My favorite part of this painting is the lady with her arm outstretched like Lewis and Clark.

I haven't submitted this to the virtual paintout, yet. 

This painting is on a panel that had some acrylic base paint of test colors. 

I just painted over the top with white gesso and that is the ground for this little painting.

Not quite sure it works, 

but I can tell you that it looks much better in person than in a photo.

Happy Summer!

2.25" x 3.75"

We arrived home last week and jumped back into the fray. 

Lots of Wyoming stuff to find again (!) and put away. 

I have some paintings I made along the way 

... will post them later, some are ok ... 

[some not - may show you the "not" ... we'll see]

Yesterday a bunch of plein air painters (The Plein Rein Painters of Juneau) 

met artist Susi Havens-Bezaire to paint! (the link goes to her blog/website)

 

Susi is travelling in a big RV with her husband up the west coast of the USA 

beginning from Tucson, Arizona (their trip began on January 1, 2013)

 - finding plein air painting groups and painting every place they go!

I am very happy to report that the weather has been grrrreat in Juneau these past several days -  and we met at Foodland choosing the Thane Ore House beach to paint.

I made a preliminary thumbnail sketch (above) and began sketching in the scene on my prepared gessoed and orange-acrylic-ed board (below):

The reason I put orange acrylic on the board was that I wanted to make the greens stand out. I began to get worried when I wasn't covering up the orange very well out there.

Spring at the Thane Ore House beach      8" x 10"    oil on board

Don't know if I will keep this title...anyone have a suggestion?

Worked on this a little more this morning and, well, there you have it.

I like to look to see how the values turned out so below is the b&w.

Oh! Matt, me and a few friends of ours hiked Mt. Juneau (3,576 feet high) after I finished painting on the beach! It was a gorgeous gorgeous vew from the tippy top. 

The hike was great

(also a little scary) and the first time Matt or I had ever done it! 

We saw Mountain Goats, heard Whistlepigs (Marmots), saw masses of teensy-tiny tundra spring flowers, ate some Twisted Stalk, spruce tips and fiddleheads and

got really tired, but a sip of some good Okanagan vino helped revive.

Thank you for checking out my art blog!