Canvas, Corkscrews and Collage

We celebrated Stacey's birthday at Canvas and Corkscrews friday night. I was hesitant to go since I felt everyones looked the same. The night before I gathered paper, images , gel medium and extra paint to bring along. I added the collage element to mine and it turned out to be a fun night.



















This is my finished piece. I layered magazine pages, hand painted paper, tissue paper, and mulberry paper before I added the tree. I covered with gel medium and then painted over with the greens, blues , and beige. I rubbed off some of the paint to let the patterned paper show through. Lastly, I painted the trees on and collaged some leaves on top . I added some burlap and a cut out paper fence.















Here is the demonstrated piece. It was interesting how they used negative space to paint the tree. First the red was painted, then the background, lastly , other colors were added to the sky.

Snowshoeing Rocky Mountain National Park

What Ive been up to is snowshoeing in our beautiful state of colorado. Im learning the ins and outs of equipment and clothing to wear. After test driving a pair of borrowed snowshoes, I bought some from craigslist. I already had some hiking poles I could use. Now Im trying to get the layering thing figured out. Wind shell, vest , polarfleece, wool shirt. two pairs of gloves.

Last Weekend we had 5 carpools of 26 people meet at Rocky Mountain National Park. We drove to the Bear Lake Trail Head and took the Emerald Lake Hike. It was about 4 miles. We passed by 3 lakes and walked right over them. There was a photographer getting some close up frozen lake shots with his tripod. Afterwards, we headed over to Oskar Blues an artsy pub in Lyons.
It was a fun day.

I think the scenery in the park may be better in winter than in the summer. The snow and rocks on the mountains proved to be one photo opportunity after another.