Estes Park Plein Air 2008

Estes Park is a small friendly town just outside the entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Park. A week long painting event ending with a Quick Draw on Saturday morning, Aug. 23rd. Artists had 90 minutes to pick your spot, paint and bring up your painting for auction. Alot of artist's take issue with these quick draws, I find them fun. It forces you to make decisions, good or bad, the public enjoys seeing the paint fly and I hope it give them a bit of courage to give painting a try. Besides lots of pine trees and mountains around us, there were a couple of still lifes set up. I chose a huge bouquet of sunflowers. This piece is a 12" x 12" oil and can be found at the Earthwood Collections on Elkwood Ave in Estes Park, along with 5 other paintings of the area that I completed during this event. The weather was crazy with even some snow fall and alot of rain. Everything was vibrant greens and there were still many summer flowers to be found in the meadows. Check out www.earthwoodartisans.com to learn about this gallery in Estes Park and also their gallery in Boulder, on 1213 Pearl St. You can now find my work at this location also. This link explains the event very well: www.estesarts.com/EstesParkPleinAir/index.asp
The scenery at the RMNP is amazing, snow on the peaks, spruce, huge ponderosa pines, aspen, waterfalls, elk walking around in town, moose, fox and peace and quiet. It is about 80 miles from Denver and so worth a trip to see. Oh, and the cute little guy up in the photo? He was the local art critic who walked over my wet painting, leaving his comment and foot prints in the wet oil. I had to dig out is "remarks" before framing and turning in the painting. All part of the fun of painting outdoors!