Monday

Back to the grind as they say. We had a great weekend up at Nick's brothers cabin in Star Valley, by Afton about three hours north of Salt Lake City on the way to Jackson, Wyoming.  Six artists in all Bryce Liston, Robert Duncan, Gregory Stocks, Nick and Atom Rees and of course myself painted.

Friday morning we set up in a canyon just a few miles south where they had a lot of cows, all curious to check us out as we worked. All the works here are as they say straight out of the box, as much as I could accomplish in the session I was standing there on location. Now maybe I'll work some more on a few to fix them up a little bit.

This was my morning painting a 10x20 and there were horses down by the stream edge that I still need to add into the painting. they moved on before I could get to them.

After lunch I walked the road a bit from the cabin and worked on this view looking down to the town of Afton. Nick was with me doing his version.

Later on in the day I tried the same view with a horizontal panel. my goal was to capture the evening glow on the mountains across the valley. This piece will need some more work since we (Bryce Liston and I ) had to wait and wait for the sun to get behind the mountain we were on in order for the shadows in front. The mountains across the way did start to glow, but then the light was too dark to paint in.

On day two we drove north into another not so impressive canyon. I started this small 10x16 but was caught off guard by the changing light as the clouds rolled in. This seems to be the complaint from everyone there.

We went back for lunch and all stuck around the cabin to find subject matter. the clouds were building up a little then and we figured painting something closer would be better. I chose the front porch and painted the light in as the break in the clouds came by.

With the evening approaching I decided on one more of some pine trees at the end of the driveway. Robert was at the base of them painting a view into the forest. This piece I spent about an hour on just trying to get an impressionistic view.

Our last day on Sunday we went back up north to hit some of the old barns and fields. I settled on this view of a yellow tree behind a few broken down structures.  This one I like a lot and feel that I don't really need to do too much more on it.  We went back for lunch, packed up and drove back to Salt Lake. It was a good trip and I would like to do it more often.

Richard Boyer