Autumn will be here soon

When you live at 9300 feet, the seasons are short, except for winter! Our aspen trees will look like this in about 6 to 8 weeks. By mid-October we won't have leaves left on the trees and ski season will start at the end of October.

I finished this painting this morning, and it is the first one I have done in a month or so. It has been a very busy summer!

Wildflower season still going strong

The wildflowers are amazing at this time of year in the Rocky Mountains, especially near the streams. We see Chiming Bells (the blue ones) Parry's Primrose (pink) and many other flowers of all colors anywhere it is wet. There is even a pink one called Elephant Head, as each little flower on the stem looks like an elephant's head with a trunk sticking out from the center. They are fun to try and identify, and even more fun to paint! This painting is just a little 6x8.

Sold! (maybe)

It is amazing what the publicity for the Bach Beethoven and Breckenridge poster has done for my business this month. The poster was printed about a month ago, and we had a poster signing and reception July 10th at the gallery that carries it. Suddenly, people think of me as a real artist rather than a wannabe artist. I like that! It is just a local poster and nothing like getting into a national magazine or winning a contest, but I see a lot of them on walls in people's homes and offices. This is the 24th year for the poster and it is a long time tradition, almost always using a local artist.

The painting above was not the one used for the poster, but another I had submitted for it. It is 18x24, and a client who purchased a little 8x10 piece of fall aspens saw it on my website and wants to buy it. I will deliver it for her approval when I go to Denver on Friday for another appointment. The gallery where I did the poster signing has sold a couple of originals and another couple sold through other outlets. It has been a good month. It will help me buy my new car this fall! If they made Subarus the color of aspens in the fall, I might buy one that color, but they don't :(

Wildflower season

There is nothing like summer in the Rocky Mountains. Because our summer season is so short, the flowers are spectacular as they are all blooming at once. I love to paint them, but have to remind myself that masses of flowers paint better than individual single flowers. Letting the eye of the viewer figure out what the individual flowers look like is more interesting to me than painting every little flower by itself. Besides, I hate noodling a painting and I find myself doing it too often!

The Breckenridge outdoor show went well

And I have a report on my new Caravan tent. While not as sturdy as a Light Dome or that type of tent, it is worth the money I paid for it. It is much less expensive than the Light Dome at just under $400, but still more than an EZup. I paid a little extra to have a steel frame instead of aluminum. For a person who does a couple of shows a year, it is very adequate. We had some really gusty winds at the end of the first day, and a couple of EZups lost their tops. People were hanging on to the frames for dear life to keep them from flying away too. I decided that not only did I need to attach my weights to the frame, but also to the canopy. There are a couple of D rings on the top of each corner of the canopy. I bought some more bungees and ran them from the canopy to the weights and after that we were very secure. Unless you have the extra bungees, the canopy is attached only with velcro.

My husband made the weights using PVC pipe and concrete. He made them fairly long, and they ended up weighing about 55lbs each. They are heavier than I wanted, but your weights really cannot be too heavy, especially when the winds pick up. We also had rain showers off and on the first day. Nothing more than a sprinkle, but still, enough to ruin frames. We had a corner booth and were also using the outside walls, so we would pull stuff in, then put it back out, and bring it in again, then put it out again.....several times. That night I picked up some clear plastic, taped it to the top of the outside walls and rolled it up so that we could lower it easily if it rained. Of course, it didn't, but hey, that is ok. That is an easy way to keep the rain away!