Stalking fly fishermen

I spent the fall trying to photograph fly fishermen so that I would have reference to use for paintings during the winter. I think some of the guys were wondering what I was up to as I photographed them over and over. Every so often I had to turn the camera away and get a shot up the river so they wouldn't think I was stalking them (I was!). No one called the police on me and I got lots of photos. This is the first painting I did from this year's crop of photos. It is 16x20 and I enjoyed working a little larger than I usually do. I have just started experimenting with adding figures to my landscapes and I am having a great time doing it!

Fly fishing on the lower Blue

I wish summer would come back! Here it is May 1st and it is snowing where I live, at 9,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. Painting these types of scenes are fun when it is white outside, but during a long winter, I run out of reference photos. We always have fishermen on the Blue River, winter and summer,(it is Gold Medal fishing), but the best scenery is summer and fall. Perhaps in another month I will be able to get more photos again. I had lots of fun painting this one. I have not painted people very much before, so it was a good experience, and something new. I did a little study from this same reference photo a while ago and it sold as soon as I took it into the gallery, so I changed the composition a little and did this larger 24x28. The study was so small that the people were nothing more than a couple of dabs of paint. The larger version needed a lot more accuracy, but I still tried very hard not to noodle them. I really like the way Ken Valastro paints people, and while I didn't get anywhere near as loose as Ken gets, it was a good start in that direction.