Back from our flyfishing trip

Returned yesterday from our annual flyfishing trip to upstate Pa.

The cabin we stay in is awesome. Its a far cry from camping in a tent like we did for 18 years.

The rain and age did us in from camping. We go every October so morning temps are in the low 40's, and it rains a lot in October.

The fishing was great, we fished four different streams catching brook, brown and rainbow trout. This time of year most of the the trout have intense color  to them.

Tom with a rainbow trout

Me with a nice brown trout

I did a few paintings back at the cabin at night.

                                                                                                  

A forest interior

Fall foliage reflection in a stream

                                                                                          

Now we deal with Hurricane Sandy tomorrow into Tuesday.

Good luck everyone.

Autumn Afternoon

Autumn Afternoon 8x10 oil

I started this painting last year and it was halfway done, but as fall turned into winter I lost interest in it and it went into the section of unfinished paintings. This past week I came across it while moving things around and put it out where I could see it.
This morning I was awake at 5:00am went out put the coffee on and put the painting on the easel and brought it to completion.
I like the warm afternoon light and the subtle shadows from the oak tree in the front yard.

The Right Light

The Shed  5x7 acrylic

A simple shed seen in the right light can help produce a pleasing picture.
A half hour before that I did a sketch of the bird feeder but wasn't happy with it so when I saw the light on the shed I turned the bird feeder sketch on its side and painted this over it.

Plein Air sketches, oh deer what a morning.

I got an early start Saturday morning, when I pulled into the park I was greeted with thick fog from the lake. I slowly drove around looking for deer and when I saw the first sign of color in the sky I went to the small parking spot over looking the lake.

I like this time of morning when you can just barely start making out the colors in the landscape and the sky goes thru its quickly changing light show. I did this sketch as the intense color started, by the time I finished the sky had changed completely.
As I was putting things away to move to the next spot I turned around and saw a herd of deer had gathered in the field  behind me. That explains the dog barking earlier.

I moved around to the back of the park where last week I saw this field starting to get a nice yellow color to it.

As I was setting up these two does decided to investigate why this person was in the corner of their field.

This is the 5x7 field sketch done that morning.

11x14 studio painting done with acrylics

My interest was the field in the middle distance so I darkened the foreground shapes and added more of a golden color to the field to help make a more dramatic picture.