Yesterday I spent the morning in the town of Silver Plume, Colorado painting with a group of plein-air painters. Here is a scene of the main street of town, which is a gravel street. Silver Plume is an old mining town about an hour west of Denver. I liked the morning sun on the fronts of the old buildings. This sketch is 8 x 10 inches.

It's summer in Colorado and that means it's time for outdoor painting! Here are a couple of 8x10 sketches I made at the Flying J Ranch park in Conifer, Colorado. We've had an extraordinary amount of rain lately and the meadows in our area are greener than usual. I am planning to paint on-site outdoors at least once a week through the summer and hopefully the autumn as well.

Last week I was at a painting workshop in Taos, New Mexico with about 15 other painters, all from the Denver area and led by Kim English. All of our work was done outdoors from nature. Sometimes we also had models pose for us so our work involved the figure in the landscape. We painted in Nicolai Fechin's garden in Taos, in the Taos Plaza, along the banks of the Rio Grande and in the small town of Arroyo Seco. So often in my painting life I am working alone, and it is one of life's great pleasures to paint with an enthusiastic group of artists.

But enough talk...above are 3 of the oil sketches I did while in New Mexico.

Here are 3 more paintings I've done since returning from France. I have many more ideas and reference photos so expect to see a few more French-landscape paintings in the coming weeks. I was in the south of France in late May so the summer greens were very apparent in the landscape. This presents interesting challenges for painters (like me) who like their paintings not to be "too green". Fortunately green can be pushed in several directions...yellow, orange, purple, blue. I did all of these in the above paintings and was satisfied with the level of green-ness, feeling that the green was softened without losing the early-summer feeling of the place. Another challenge is the bluish-green of some crops especially if they are in the foreground (since blue generally wants to recede into the background). This was the case in the middle painting. I thought twice about using so much blue in the foreground, but ultimately liked the color.

In my last posting I added a painting done on my recent trip to France. Now I'm back in my studio (which I am increasingly moving outdoors in nice weather) and continuing to do paintings of the French countryside. I like the warm colors, the old stone farm buildings and the way the fields are divided into interesting sizes and shapes. As usual, when I return from a trip like this, I have a very strong urge to paint the things I have just seen.

This painting is 9 x 12 inches.

I just got back from a trip to France and Spain, and had an opportunity to do some painting on location in southern France. This is one of the results. It is a view from the town of Castelnau-de-Montmiral over the rolling countryside. I find this kind of country excellent for painting...it is a little hilly and the fields are divided into fairly small pieces and often divided by trees or shrubbery. This creates interesting shapes for the painter, and southern France is full of scenes like this one. I completed 10 paintings while in France, and brought back about many photos for reference in creating more paintings in the studio. This painting is about 9" x 12".

OK, I am back from my art shows in Texas now, although I will hit the road again soon enough. Meanwhile the art shows were very good and as usual I enjoyed my travels in Texas. One of the things I did upon returning home was to look at a series of urban landscapes I had done a few months ago of the streets of Chicago. I liked the overall composition and feel, but wasn't happy with the amount of light in the paintings. So, without changing the composition, I put another layer of paint on top of everything and upped the contrast between light and shadow, empasizing the shapes of the figures. I did this with 7 paintings...here are a couple of them. Both are 11" x 14".

By the way, early next month I will be in Chicago for an art festival on 57th Street. Many years ago I lived on 55th and then 54th, so this will be familiar ground!