Challenged Again - Virtual Paintout, Summit County, CO

6x6 inches, acrylic on watercolor paper

 Breckenridge, Colorado

It has been ages since I've participated in an online painting challenge.  One of my favorites is Bill Guffy's Virtual Paintout, which chooses a different location around the world each month and challenges people to use Google Street View to select a scene and then paint it.  He includes the paintings on his site and on Facebook.  I wanted to give this one a try for a couple reasons.  First, we finally are buried in snow after a balmy start to winter in southern Wisconsin, and I thought I should paint a snowy scene.  Next, we've actually vacationed in Breckenridge a couple times in the summer, have driven around the whole area, hiked the streets, everything except skied.

It takes a while to do these challenges, even in a small format.  I virtually drove all over Breckenridge, up in the mountains, over at Keystone and the whole area searching for a scene that grabbed me.  Then planning and actually painting took several hours.  Finally there are rules for submitting these challenges, including resizing the image to fit Guffy's requirements, something I never remember how to do from time to time.  I think I did it correctly, but I'll have to wait to see if it shows up with the other submissions. 

Recycling, Art, and Vacation Postcards

We were away for a week recently, hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, and visiting with friends in Breckenridge, Colorado. When I showed Dick the pictures he said there were too many of him, not surprising since I am the one who carries the camera.

The scenery was stunning - a mix of mountains, lakes, trees, and wildflowers that just took my breath away. Of course, the altitude might have had something to do with this effect as well.

I took along the little paint set I made from an old metal cigarette tin, with pans made from Fimo, filled with my Winsor Newton paints, a cut down sponge, some pens and a sawed off paint brush. The postcards were old ones coated with gesso. This was an experiment to see how painting on recycled post cards would go, and I liked the results. Painting little scenes doesn't take much time or paint, and the results can be mailed home. I sent this one to myself to see if it arrived intact, and was pleased by the results. None of the paint lifted, despite the fact I had no way of fixing the little watercolors. This snow scene was from imagination.

This is another little watercolor on a recycled post card. I made a couple to send to our host, and another group of friends who joined us on vacation. I never like fussing with carrying too much equipment, and this whole kit fit nicely in a sealable plastic bag.