Around the corner

 Around the corner from the conservation area near my son's house in Exeter, NH was this nice view of a barn.  11" X 14" oil on canvas. I may work on it some more. I found that my hands are no longer steady enough with a brush to do a good job on straight lines (architecture for example). We were visiting NH and MA for Passover this year and I enjoyed the ocean as well as the early spring scenery.

Atlantic Ocean in Rye, NH. Windy day.

Piscassic River, Wildlife Management Area, Epping, Exeter, Newfields, NH.

I'm not sure the painting is done so I'm not posting it yet to my website. I will think about it for a few more days. Meanwhile, I have signed up for more plein air painting. Still struggling with that, but enjoying the challenge. I only bring very small canvases with me to experiment with.

Looking forward to our synagogue's annual retreat in McCall (Idaho) soon. We missed that the last 2 years because of the pandemic. 

Alaska Trip

 מַה-גָּדְלוּ מַעֲשֶׂיךָ יְהוָה; מְאֹד, עָמְקוּ מַחְשְׁבֹתֶיךָ.

We returned from a 13 day trip to Alaska. I am having a hard time deciding which photos to display. The first 6 days were land tour, the last 7 on cruise ship.  I definitely preferred the land part. I probably will not go on a cruise again.  I did like the small harbor type boat we took in the Kenai Fjords. That's where I saw this family of orcas. The Hebrew verse is from Psalm 92, verse 6. When I attended the Sabbath morning prayers, that is what I thought about this trip. English translation: "How great are Thy works, O Lord! Thy thoughts are very deep."

Our first view of mountains on our way from Anchorage to Denali National Park.  This is a view through the bus window.

We enjoyed our visit to the Alaskan sled dogs, learned about how they are raised and how they race in the Iditarod. We got to play with the puppies too.  These sled dogs are not the same as the Siberian Huskies which are also used in Alaska during the winter and are much bigger and heavier.  They are bred for stamina, not pretty colors.

This was one of the stops on the tour of Denali National Park. The park is huge and we only saw a little bit on our 8 hour bus tour.  We did see a grizzly mom and her cubs, a moose, some small ground squirrels and birds. The highlight was when we were almost out of the park and had to stop for a lone caribou that was taking her time walking along the road. I didn't get a photo of that one through the bus window.

We took the train from Denali to Talkeetna. Saw more beautiful scenery along the way. I learned new words "Taiga" and "Braided Rivers". Taiga is the Russian word for the boreal forest.  The braided rivers were interesting and had gravel islands from the glacial silt.  We had seen beautiful lakes in Alberta years ago with green and blue colors from the glacial silt there.  The rivers we saw on this trip were a different shade of green, not as bright.  We did not actually get to see Denali mountain since it was behind clouds.  We did see the base of it though.

We visited a conservation area. The animals have some kind of injury and once they are healthy, they are released back into the wild. I watched a staff member bottle feed an orphan musk ox. He drank the milk very quickly. They feed the baby every 4 hours.

We had a harbor boat tour of the Kenai Fjords. According to the guides, these are tidewater glaciers and are not shrinking. (I'm not sure of that, but they certainly were big). This is the area where I saw the orcas. It was really beautiful there.  I have more photos from the cruise part of the trip, but I have to select which ones to pick out. I'll do that later this month.

I bought some large canvases a couple of months ago. Now I have to decide which scene to paint.  We saw so many beautiful mountains, it is a hard decision.

Vacation!

I'm having a wonderful time back east. I love my new home in the west, but still felt a little homesick for all the beautiful greens in New Hampshire.  I decided to stay for 4 weeks. Hubby went back after 2 and while I miss him, I am keeping busy.  While he was here, we did lots of touristy stuff, including taking the Cog Railway up to the Mount Washington, walking the Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine and more.  I have to pick from lots of photos we took so I hope my readers enjoy them.

We were above the clouds at the top of the mountain and it was cool and comfortable not too windy.  I finished reading Dan's book about his year of studying this mountain and highly recommend it. I guess we had never tried the Cog Railway before because it is quite expensive, but we enjoyed splurging since this was our vacation.  It was worth the ride.  We had hiked many times in Crawford Notch, but not up to Mount Washington.

We enjoyed walking around Dorrs Pond which was near our old house in Manchester.  It's still hard for me to walk too far (had replacement knee surgery), but I made it the one mile around the pond.

I've spent some fun times with artist Rollande Rouselle and other  artist friends who are trying to teach me plein air painting. I'm really terrible at it, but enjoying the learning process.

I think that's it for today. I'm having some difficulty with my laptop computer. I'll try again tomorrow to upload a few more pix.  This has been a wonderful vacation, but I'm almost ready to go back home to Idaho now.

Back to School, Part 5

Pelican Party, 18" X 24", water mixable oils on stretched canvas.
I think this painting is finally done. I haven't posted it yet to my website in case I change my mind. I painted this with palette knife and brushwork. I didn't put in as many pelicans as were in my original photo. The pelicans were at the Laguna Beach State Marine Reserve (California). There were some other birds on the rocks too, probably cormorants or terns. I couldn't tell from the photo, just saw some black birds.

It was actually fun painting with the palette knife, but the downside is that the paint is so thick that it takes a long time to dry. That meant I couldn't add the pelicans until the painted rock was dry. I used a brighter blue than I usually use for the Pacific Ocean (Phthalo blue/red shade). I also made some mixes with white and with cerulean blue. I thought that really brightened up the painting.

I used an olive green and titanium white mix for some of the rock and some of the guano. I used raw umber mixes for the browns.  I didn't really need too many different colors for this painting. There is a little bit of sap green to show some moss or grass on the rock (you can enlarge the view of the painting by clicking on it).

I am finished with my 12 week oil painting class at New Hampshire Institute of Art. It was hard work, but I feel that my skills with this medium have improved. I still have one more painting to finish (below).

By the Sea, WIP. Since this is the Mediterranean Sea, the sea colors are very different. I used mixes with Viridian.  I'll try to finish this one within the next week or two. These two paintings are really the first time I have tried seriously painting seas/oceans. I am working on this one with brushes, not palette knife (I had enough of that for a while with the last one.)

Then I took a break and did a little illustration with gouache, pen and ink. This one is on Canson 140 lb. rough paper. I enjoyed playing with my old paints, although some of them were a bit dried up. Even though they were dried up and I had limited colors, I was still able to make a study I was happy with. I don't like the image enough to spend time painting a larger painting. This is the view of Fort Constitution (from Fort Stark) in New Castle, NH. The water is the Atlantic Ocean.

I think that's it for a while on ocean/seas/water paintings. I have prepared a hardbord with gesso to play with next. I'm thinking about flowers to go on it. Spring is slowly getting here and my daffodils are open now.  I keep watching for more plants/flowers to open. Our bikes are ready for their first ride of the season and I'm looking forward to that too.

I ordered some new business cards from Vistaprint. It was actually cheaper to order cards from them than to keep printing a few of my own each time I do a show. The paper is a very good quality too. They have sales periodically. I waited for a good sale and I'm happy with the cards. My next scheduled show is July 26th in New Castle, NH.