I have continued painting with acrylic blocking in my painting. I'm a little undecided yet if I like using acrylic for this stage of the painting and found myself continually wanting to get out my oils. The tranparency of the acrylics are hard to get used to. But I think tomorrow I will go to the oils. I will be running the gallery myself and will probably be interupted quit a bit but I'll see how far I can get on it.

I had planned to get back to work on my Owl painting that I had started several weeks ago but was hopeing for one more snow for research on my spruce boughs. Just when I needed that one more snow of course it has quit snowing. The trees are even budding out now. The river is a little higher and with over 8 feet of snow in the mountains it might be an exciting runoff particularly as I live along that river. We have one saving grace though in this area. With the high elevation it freezes every night and that puts a natural control on run off[famous last words??]
Any way I had taken several photos of the Jakeys ForkCreek area east of Dubois this past winter and have been wanting to do a couple of long narrow paintings of them. I am also exsperimenting with acrylic as an underpainting befor finishing off with oil. I don't know how far I will take it with the acrylic befor doing that so we will see where that will go. The painting is on linen canvas and is 15"x30". I am doing this in my gallery and it is interesting how the comments from folks coming in go. It is sure a great way of meeting folks. Last night a bear specialist and his wife came in on their way to Yellowstone where he works with gizzly bears to begin the summer season. They were fun people to visit with.
I will be including Mule Deer into the landscape as they slowly traverse the scene-browsing as they go.