Miner's Club (Park City, UT)

This painting was an experiment; my first time attempt to do a "plein aire" painting. It was pleasant outside yet, breezy.  It took two hours to get the basic sketch. I finished the painting in studio with a photo reference.  I learned that I have to be a lot quicker to do a painting outside. Diane Turner is a landscape artist. She can complete a painting in one and a half to two hours. I took a landscape oil painting class from her in February and was able to finish this piece of art. Diane was a student of LeConte Stewart; a famous Utah artist in the Impressionist style.

My sweet 10 year old, Anne Marie, just said to me, "This is a very amazing painting and I really like it."  I'm so lucky to have a girl like that.

Things I learned in this painting:

-when painting the mountains, take your finger and smudge the line up into the sky color in places.

-less yellows and oranges the farther objects appear in the painting.  The farther they get, the cooler the colors get and the softer the details are.

-on the road leading back to the club Diane suggested that I add a darker line-dot-dot-dot, etc. just between the grass   and road to give it a nice effect.  I like how it turned out.

-she also suggested I define the trunk in the foreground.  I like how it turned out.

-I learned that I can rent frames from the Appleframe  Gallery at the cost of 10% of retail when I want to take a painting to put in an art show.  

-let the mother color (the color used to paint the initial scetch.  In this case orange) show through at times.  If you check you can see it come through in the clouds even.  Fun.