View of Wallowa Lake from the East Moraine

The Wallowa Valley Festival of the Arts is June 5-7, 2009 in beautiful Joseph, Oregon. I hope to be participating this year and this is my donation for their silent auction to benefit the festival. It is 12x9, Oil on Linen. You may recognize it from a couple of my studies from last summer, painted on the east moraine overlooking Wallowa Lake. I have lately finished two large paintings that I will post as soon as I have decent photos of them. I also hope to rework and update my web site soon, it is long overdue. I have several other large paintings in the works, with one getting very close to completion. And I hope to get out on location soon, I'm overdue for that as well. To paint this scene, I had to get up at 4:30am and hike up a steep hill for an hour to catch the early morning light as the sun peeked over the moraine. It was an excellent way to spend the morning before breakfast. 

Christmas Day Snow

All I wanted for Christmas was snow to paint and boot warmers. The boot warmers haven't arrived yet, but the snow did in abundance. Painting snow is one of my most favorite things so I'm a happy girl today even if my toes and fingers are still trying to thaw. These two oil studies are 8x6 inches. 

Early Morning On The Lake

Another view of the lake -- I was seduced by the sunshine streaming over the moraine, illuminating the atmosphere over Bonneville Mountain (Mt. Howard is to the left and Chief Joseph Mountain is to the right, with peeks/peaks of  Aneroid Mountain and Craig Mountain in the distance). It was nice to have a few clouds this morning. I need to fix and blur the reflections in the water since they are distracting.

          The afternoon became a little stormy with great clouds. I was feeling too lazy to head out to paint, so I did a cloud study from my deck. If I keep doing cloud studies, maybe one day I will figure out how to paint them well.  

Morning Reflections

Yesterday I spent my early morning painting time location scouting and found a couple of spots that looked promising. I returned to my favorite one this morning at the head end of Wallowa Lake. I awoke a little late and had to scramble a bit and didn't spend as much time finessing the drawing as I would like, but I think the study works for color and light reference. I would love to work this one up larger at some point, I think it is my new favorite.

Above The Lake

I tried to hike up the east moraine of Wallowa Lake this morning. I made the mistake of leaving the logging road to hike up what looked like a nice foot trail. It became more of a deer trail and then dissipated into no trail at all. There were plenty of whitetail out and they all seemed to be having a much easier time with the terrain than I was; as you can see, it is quite steep. I stopped when I reached a precipice and set up to paint this view in the canyon above the lake. Next time I'll stick to the logging road and see where I end up. I got a good workout though in preparation of my Eastern Sierra Lake Ediza trip in August.