On Sunday March 26 I met my daughter for lunch in Boulder. On the way home, I took the backroads looking for quiet farms in spectacular settings--something we have a good deal of here in rural Colorado. I found one outside of Longmont that seemed just the right combination: a horizontal cluster of old-fashioned farm buildings enclosed in mature trees, and surrounded by fields--and in this case set against a backdrop of rainclouds just clearing Long's Peak.

I settled on that image as my project, and chose a Baltic birch panel 15x30 primed with pale blue. I laid in the basics that painting-day on Tuesday, but went home feeling I didn't get very far. 

Next painting day was Thursday, in a class with my friend George Coll. George based his instruction that day on a scene of calves grazing on a snowy meadow, with a dramatic backdrop of mountains shrouded in mist. It was a Michael Workman-type atmospheric image, likely because I'd been talking so much about Workman lately--and George likes to teach to the moment. Again I got the basic structure down, calves in place--only to discover I'd left the lower quadrant of the painting featureless. I sketched in a riverbank, which may or may not hold up as I get into the final stages. Now I have two unfinished paintings...generally I work one till it's finished and framed!