Big Mountains on Small Canvas

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North Cascades in Purple. 4×4 acrylic on canvas. 2017
Mt Bachelor. 5×7. acrylic on canvas. 2018
Dream Lake II. 4×5. acrylic on canvas 2017

My favorite way to remember a trip is to paint it. My favorite way to get over painter’s block is to do small paintings. Luckily this past year I took a lot of really great, beautiful trips so I had plenty of inspiration for when I wanted to do something small. Unfortunately, now my problem is that I want to move to the PNW (and I’m also running out of wall space). But these are good problems to have.

Crested Butte

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I love Crested Butte. Not only do I always have the best times there (birthday weekend snowboard trips with amazing people) but the scenery is top notch. It’s hard not to be inspired to paint these mountains. The beauty and the memories make Crested Butte one of my favorite subjects to paint.

Crested Butte

Crested Butte in January. Acrylic on Canvas. 24×36. 2017

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Crested Butte in Color. 8×10 acrylic on canvas

Inktober

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My friend and I decided to do an “art a day” month beginning in October in order to be more diligent about practicing/making art. Turns out that the month of October is also “Inktober”. We didn’t follow the Inktober prompts but it was really neat to see what other artists did on a daily basis and being a part of that mini community was also a great motivator.  Since I’m just starting out with watercolors, I had a lot of new styles and techniques to practice. Below are a few pieces I did in October showing the different subjects, styles, and techniques I tried out.

Island Lake WRR. 5×7 Watercolor
North Cascades in Purple. 5×7 Watercolor
LL Bean Boots. 5×7. watercolor
Boulder Theater. 5×7 Watercolor
Gore Range in Purple. 5×7 watercolor
Spirit Animal. 5×7 watercolor
Hedgie goes to the pumpkin patch. 5×7 watercolor
Maine Moose. 5×7 watercolor
Stupidhead. 5×7 watercolor
Copper Snow Day. 5×7 watercolor
Elk Ave CB. 5×7 watercolor

Flatirons Practice

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flatirons practice Sept 17, 2017

Trying to paint the most iconic view in Boulder requires practice and a lot of it. With that said, I’m pretty happy with how things are coming along.

Once I get back into the artisan fair rotation and begin to focus on my business more, I hope to offer my watercolors (mountains, flatirons, skylines, etc) as cards for sale.

Engagement Paintings

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People are really into engagement photos and capturing the moment the proposal happens. Typically in Colorado, that’s done in a beautiful place. By random chance, a friend’s friends got engaged at Dream Lake the same day I completed a 4×5 painting of that location. My friend immediately contacted me about buying it as a gift for them. This sparked a little idea of doing engagement paintings (at least as gifts for friends). A few days later that same friend contacted me about commissioning a painting of her engagement as a gift for her fiance. It was then I started to think that this could be a really cool market to dip my toes into: Engagement Paintings.

Colorado is full of so many picturesque spots that having an original painting of where you got engaged or tied the knot is a cool really unique way to memorialize it.

The painting I ended up doing was surprisingly way harder than I had originally anticipated, but I’m (and more importantly “the client” is) pretty happy with the finished product.

Engagement

Trying Something New

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Acrylics have always been my strong suit. However, my style requires a lot of time and patience and recently I’ve had little of both. So in order to  make me feel productive and challenge myself, I’ve picked up watercolors. Turns out, nice quality liquid watercolors are WAY more fun to use than the little crayola disk watercolors we got as elementary students.

I’m excited to see the progress I’ve made in such a small amount of time and how drastically different my watercolor technique is compared to my acrylics.

My first piece. San Juan Columbines 2017
Pitkin Campsite 2017. My 2nd watercolor
Portland Headlight 2017
Madison from Monona 2017
Madison from State Street 2017
Flatirons I. 2017
4th of July Trail 2017
CO Mtns 2017
Gore Lake Camp 2017
Pitkin Camp 2017

I also realized that making cards with watercolors is way more fun than trying to buy one from the store.

Seattle thank you card
SF thank you card. 2017
Cow Retirement card. 2017

Working small

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Dream Lake. 2017. Acrylic on canvas 4×5.

I’ve realized the best way to get out of an artist’s block is to think small. So I bought a bunch of little canvases, gathered up photos and ideas from recent trips, and then poured myself a bunch of coffee. So expect a bunch more little paintings.

Portland headlight II. 2017. acrylic on canvas. 4×4

My mom special requested a small painting of Portland headlight (one of the best pictures I took while in Maine last October) so I used one of my mini 4×4 canvases and happily obliged. Once again, quick small paintings helping me out of my painting slumps.

Sam’s Aspens

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Sam’s Aspens. 2017. 48×36

My friend (and former roomie), Sam, bought a condo a couple months ago and asked me to help fill her walls– which I obviously said “yes!” The first spot to fill was, of course, above the fireplace. She gave me a target canvas size, color preferences, and “aspens” and the rest was up to me. It was really great to work on my largest piece to date and it was my first piece to paint entirely without photo references. It may have taken me a long time (at least 39 hours) but I’m really glad with how it turned out.

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picture for size reference

What’s next?

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After the Jackalope Art fair was finished, I got a lot of people asking, “so what’s next?” Good question.  Even though the first show went really well, I’m still really nervous about putting myself out there. It’s a big investment both emotionally and financially. But as I sit here typing this, I have 4 applications for art shows and art residencies in the works. Whether or not I actually send out the applications and their fees is another story.

In addition to potentially participating in summer art fairs, I’m also working on setting up an etsy account to make it easier for people to purchase prints/paintings. Once that account is up and running I will spread the good news.

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2nd day of Jackalope with my biggest cheerleader/booth engineer

Resolution Bowl. 2017

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Resolution Bowl. 2017. Acrylic on canvas. 8×10

The best part about the Jackalope Art fair was the feedback I got from people. I got a lot of great responses for all of my work, but the pieces that people liked the most (and that sold best) were my black and white mountain paintings/prints. That made me incredibly happy.  My black and white mountains have really been my true style, but I began to doubt if people would be receptive to these pieces.  After seeing that strangers actually do really like my mountains, I can get back to working more on these pieces in the new year. It was almost fitting that the first painting I completed in 2017 is of Resolution Bowl at Copper Mountain.

Time to go on even more trips to the mountains!