The winter session of my painting class was about to start and I wanted to get warmed up a few days early. Maureen had turned me on to a Facebook group called "Eastern Sierra & Scenic Hwy 395" where lots of people post photos and artwork, and many of them are very good photographers. On that site I found a photo of an old wagon in the ghost town of Bodie, and I decided to paint it. I am quite pleased with how it turned out and it helped boost confidence in my painting again.
For quite some time I've been thinking that a good source of ideas for paintings would be my photos of hiking the John Muir Trail in 2001. I thought that it would be cool to have a series of paintings that would illustrate the story of my adventure. I've already done a couple of them, but this was the first one that I did with the idea in mind that it was the beginning of a series. Five of us started out from Tuolumne Meadows, and after several hours of hiking up Lyell Canyon, came across this view of Mt. Lyell, highest peak in Yosemite. The painting is a bit messy, but I like that I just plunged in and did most of it with just a few big washes with a large brush.
My first class project of the new year was a sunset scene in snowy mountains.
