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!