I took this photo on my phone for Opening day at Arapahoe Basin for the ’12-’13 ski season.For some reason this picture just really inspires me. I’m not sure if it’s the composition, the colors, or maybe it’s just the spirit that it embodies, but I love it and so I wanted to paint it.

The hardest part, no matter how extremely excited I am about a piece, is putting the brush to a completely empty canvass.  Painting a blue sky seems pretty easy (and in this case it was), but I almost dreaded everything else that was to come.
    

The mountains were much more challenging than they may look, but I’m real happy with how they turned out. Painting “happy trees” may be one of my favorite things to do and they definitely added a lot to this piece.

The part that I dreaded the most about this piece was all the color and intricate details of the people and their snow gear. The fun thing about painting (that I need to remind myself more of) is the fact that it doesn’t have to be perfect. The point of a painting is that it’s not a photograph; things can be more stylized. And that’s exactly what I did. I actually had a lot of fun being more abstract with this piece.

I’ m really happy with how “A-Bay on Opening Day” turned out. Definitely not my usual style, but I think I could take on more pieces like this in the future.