This is a place I know well as I used to love riding all over this large open desert and hope to get back out here to paint again.
Then a few days after this, I went with Carolyn Thompson from Reno, Nevada, to paint near or at Blue Lakes, California. It was a windy morning that we chose, and cool. So I climbed on some huge rocks in the sun and tried this scene, on a 8 x 10 piece of Uart I had with me:
I am surprised at how this one came out. I could look down on the lake from here, but as its name goes, it was just "blue" so I was glad I
chose the rocks.
The next one is a sketch I made on morning in Hope Valley before the Plein-air week started, I liked how this area looked early in the morning, facing into the sun as it came up from the east---so this is a place I went back to during the week. The resulting 9 x 12,( and is a bit different than this sketch) is now hanging in the Gallery so I guess the practise helped. Our paintings will hang for a month there. We met some nice people during the event, and many really good plein-air painters were there. I really enjoyed it this year. :
The whole area , tho , is so different that it was last year as far as color goes, and is a lot drier and so we worry about fire. When fall comes , we have such wonderful color--but this year may pass without such dramatic color because of the dryness. I will have to wait and see. So, thats it, Hope you are all out painting!
