I am off to Montana till mid week so I too will be busy getting to this Shira Moose. How about the month of April to do our Moose. Being as how I have a lot of comments and e-mails concerning this endeavor-I do believe I will add a new Blog covering my Wilderness and Wildlife Challenges. That should be fun and interesting.

CHALLENGE
I thought being as I am about to get real busy with opening the gallery and have to go to Montana for the next 4 or 5 days beginning sunday-this would be a good time to offer a new Wildlife Art challenge of this Cow Moose I took last spring. Thought it might be fun to work on a backlit animal. So have at it. I have posted it to a size that by clicking onto it-you can copy a large image of this old girl. When you are finished I hope you will send me a copy of your art to post on my blog as we did with the Bighorn Ram. If this goes like it seems to be going I am going to have to begin a new blog. It is fun though to put everyones submission together just to see how everyone interpretes what I am posting.

HALLETT PEAK
16"x20" Oil Painting
This view of Hallett Peak is from the road to Bear Lake. In modern times you must take a bus to get to the Lake. It is a case where the area has been loved to death and now they are trying to control access to this area. It is a very beautiful area with some great hikes into Loch Vale and west into the lakes immediately below Hallett. Another day or two I should be finished with both this painting as well as the Moraine Park painting.

In the past week while I have been working on my Deer painting I have worked on several other Oils while the deer was drying. This is a view across Moraine Park in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. As a teenager our pastor had a cabin on Fall River at the edge of Estes Park and we often went there for a week at a time. I had the opportunity to explore Rocky Mountain and later as newly married, my brother, the friend we grew up with and our wives were still able to stay in the cabin. What a life. In more recent years I had the opportunity to illustrate a guidebook on the park. An endeavor I am really proud of. I still love painting the area. Across Moraine Park, 15"x20" Oil Painting

Worked more on my Deer painting today. Blocking in the deer even more and the sagebrush to the point where I think I want most of it put. I did go back in and enlarge the buck. He just looked too small. Now wondering if the deer immediately behind him are a little too small looking? I had been comparing him with the ones at the bottom and the Doe at the top. Will have to go a ways on the painting and then decide.

Back to my Deer painting today. Worked on the Sagebrush on the left side and have begun blocking in the Deer

I intended to get back to work on my Deer painting today but this morning I finished up my watercolor and then did some gallery work in anticipation of our opening for the season in the next couple of weeks and finished the afternoon off by posting my latest outdoor adventure on my OUTDOOR ADVENTURE blog. Hope you will take the time to go over and take a look at it. After my saturday morning venture I just may have to do a few more stream-snow paintings.

I finished the tree and foreground on my Gouache and put the final touches in the foreground. it is a Gouache Watercolor painting 10 3/4"x19 1/2".
If anyone has ever driven Interstate 80 across southern Wyoming you drive by the Snowy Range and Elk Mountain towards Rawlins, Wyoming. It is a 100 mile drive and very picturesque in summer but a "Wish I had never seen this place" in the winter. We have always refered to it as the Snow Chi Ming Trail being that the interstate through here was built during the Viet Nam war. The mountain in the background is Elk Mountain.

I must be having an Oil painting block as yesterday I could not seem to get enthused enough to work on my Deer painting so I went to my watercolors and began this 11"x20" Gouache Watercolor on 300#Arches Watercolor paper. Got the background in and the middle trees along with the Hay meadow started. I plan to have a big old Cottonwood coming up from the foreground that will work perfectly to give me some verticle to all the horizontal I have going on. This is a scene from the Upper Platte River valley south of Saratoga, Wyoming. After Dubois this is one of my favorite places in the country.

This morning we awoke to a little bit of snow. Was sure hoping for a lot more. Lander, 75 miles east of us had a foot. South and central Wyoming has roads closed. We are still hurting for moisture. I am in charge of weather recording for the U S Weather people and we have not had an inch of moisture since Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful morning though and after my session at the Dubois House of Horrors where I put my poor foot through excrusiating circumstances I drove up the mountain above my house but by the time I got to where I could get some nice shots of the departing storm it all socked in on me. fog and flurries. Oh well it was really quite pleasant.
I did get a few hours in on our Deer painting. Working my way down from the top detailing as I go. Even worked the top deer quite a bit. Will be getting more sagebrush in as I go so it won't be as scattered as the top. That should give the painting stability or a foundation at the bottom.

It is high time I get back to my Deer painting. I had to put away my brushes for a few days and do some framing projects for the local Museum and several Dude Ranches and some Gallery Opening projects. Still working on that but Have a little more time to get back to painting.

I also posted the Bighorn Sheep Challenge on my Painting-a-Day blog. Some really great things were done and sent to me. Be sure and check it out.

I even got a little R & R time by spending an afternoon up on East Fork. Was a beautiful day with temperatures into the 60's. That is to change today and single digits expected by Saturday morning. Ahh. Winter to return.

I have for the past several years toyed with the idea of extending my welfare family in the name of wildlife artist research with putting out cracked corn along the edge of my yard. I even had bought a sack but knowing that it can be quite a mess with Bird dropping had refrained for the past year in doing so. Yesterday morning Vicki went ahead and did so and within an hour we were inundated with Canadians and Mallards. I shot this pix from my front room window. At least I can get some pretty good shots of waterfowl.

I worked a little more on this painting this wekend. Beginning the detail on the grasses on the right side and refining still the trees or forest edge if you will on the upper left portion of the painting.

I didn't get any work done on my painting yesterday as I went elk hunting in the morning[with camera]and worked on several other projects. Returned with my wife last night as she wanted to see what she missed in the morning. was not as many elk as there was as in the morning but I could not resist shooting more pictures[see my OUTDOOR ADVENTURES blog]Good research material anyway.

I continued work on this painting last night moving my snow line around on the ridge edge, the shadowed area of snow on the top and playing around with the timber at the top. Think I have something going with it now.

UNSEEN BUT SENSED DANGER
24"x30" Oil Painting
I am off on my painting and have brushed in color mostly to cover up the white and to give me a sense opf where I want to go. Being on a ridge line the right or west side has melted out snow from more direct influence from the sun while the left side will be mostly snow and in shadow. It also serves to give contrast to the deer as they are painted in. Still playing around with the top part of the timber just trying to decide how I want it to read. Also put in another east side of snow towards the top for design and to break up the grasses I will have there.
This is definitely the worst point to show off a painting as folks will think that fool doesn't know what he is doing. Ahh. The scribble phase.
I have gone back to my Painting-a-Day blog and going to try and be a little more consistent on doing something nearly every day. For 2 days now I am good.

For those folks who have given up on my Deer painting begun with idea thru sketches some posts back. I have again begun work on it. I had said it would be a drawn out process as my major wildlife pieces can be. I again changed what I had decided at one point to be a design I would begin painting on. It still botherd me and I let it set and mulled it over for a few weeks in my mind and yesterday and this morning I went back to repositioning and ended up closer to my original idea of a very verticle format. I have now sketched it out on a 24"x36" Canvas and am now ready to apply paint.

Just sat down with a cup of coffee when Russ who is the town paper delivery man came by with the Casper Star-Tribune-the state newspaper. Russ just lost his wife a month ago so it is good to see him back at work delivering. Vicki grabed the camera and caught me in a relaxed moment. Look. No crutch even. Hurts but I am persevering. Is only 35 degrees but got the paper read befor a breeze came up and got cold. So did the coffee.

While much of the state has been receiving snow since yesterday and in fact S E Wyoming is snowed in with road closures we are looking pretty good. We did have a couple of inches yesterday morning but you could not tell it now. My wife and I went out for breakfast this morning and as Vicki likes to walk the mile back home I drove up onto the hill above our house to check out the countryside. Here is the view, with yesterdays snow melted out, of the Ramshorn. I glassed all the country in a 360 degree view and could not find one elk or any critter for that matter. There are several wolf packs working in our area and they have the ungulate populations pretty scattered and laying low.
It is not that warm out but with no wind and the sun shining brightly my wife is out on our deck with her morning coffee. I do believe I will join her. Just too nice to be doing any work.

After working a while on my Big Horn Sheep challenge yesterday I was wasting time going through some old paintings wondering if there was any salvage to the pile and dug this oil painting out. After not looking at it for some time[years]I could definitely see why it had not sold at a gallery I had it in in Saratoga, Wyoming. Embarrassing. But with potential. So through the afternoon I reworked the whole thing keeping pretty much the drawing and mood I enhanced and freshened up the detail. Am now pretty happy with it.
It is from a series of lakes high in the Snowy Range in southern Wyoming and a favorite area of mine. I discovered a series of lakes from climbing up to bench to bench while exploring a mountain stream. Real adventures can be had by the unexpected finds along the way. How is it said? It is not the destination but the journey.
SNOWY RANGE LAKE Oil Painting 10"x15"

I have finished putting the final touches on this Gouache Watercolor Painting.

Detailing out the brush and adding the light to the small spruces on the bottom left hand side. I have downloaded this post larger so by clicking on the image one might get a larger view of the painting.

SOLD

I definitely must be posting too much as I was gone sunday thru tuesday and have had a number of e-mails and phone calls as to my whereabouts. Had my appt. with the foot Dr. Things are continuing to look pretty good. He gave me a velcro ankle brace that sure helps when I wear it and in fact did not use a crutch all day yesterday. Was feeling it though by night. Had my yearly heart Dr. check-up from the stints I had when life flighted 2 years ago whick I blame on the cancer treatments. I had elevated blood pressure which I have never had befor ??So I have to keep a check on that and let them know. Hmm. Then my wife decided it has been a number of years since we had our eyes checked so...Did great with the test with no changes except when I got to the Glaucoma test. Flunked that so now I get to see a specialist for that. Glad I didn't have a check-up with my cancer Doc. That has been great news for awhile now. Incidently the eye Dr told my wife that if everyone had her eyes he would be out of a job.
I did go back to this painting and want to thank everyone for their advice and input as I worked my way through this painting. I was going to include more Willows in the bottom but decided not to so I have only touched up a few spots and did the snow on the bottom log. I am going to call it finished.
SOLD

A little more refinement plus adding the brush and trees on the side. Still pretty much silhouetted in. I have added tracks along the bottom following the stream.

Worked today beginning on the detail and again from left to right and from top to bottom and back to forward. Blackrock Creek begins at Togwotee Pass on the continental divide above Dubois and runs westward into Jackson Hole where it meets up with first the Buffalo River then the Snake River. I was really taken with the light hitting the snow and the snow edges along the open and frozen water. I have left the white of the paper for those lightest edges and a grayer-blue for the tops of the snow with darker cast shadows. In the previous post I had pretty much 1 value in the shadows but all ready I have deepened those back in the trees. I began the trees as dark silhouettes then paint lighter values over defining form. The dark was mixed Indigo and Neutral tint[winsor newton]Some Quindricine rose in places too just to add differences though one would be hard pressed to notice those color changes. I am painting this on #1 Crescent illustration Board.

I must be posting too much on this site as I have been away for several days and have several folks e-mailing wondering where I was.
So back to business. Befor I left last weekend I had started this Gouache watercolor 18"x22" image size, BLACKROCK WINTER. I am in my winter period apparantely. Even though most folks have been in a whiteout most of this winter and ahte to see something like this-we here in NW Wyoming are receiving none of it. Our snow is at 30% of normal. Similar to the winter of 1988 which of course were the prelude to the fires in Yellowtone National Park.
Could we please have some of your snow?