Cougar Peak #31

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today marks one whole month completed in the series. I suppose it is sort of a mini land mark or goal. I prefer to break it down into smaller goals instead of having a goal of 334 left to go. It is kind of fun to look back through the whole month now and see all of the changes. It makes me excited to see what the other months will bring!! So as a little extra bonus for today I am also including a thumbnail image of all the paintings for the month of January.

Cougar Peak #30

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Another blanket of fresh snow on the mountain again, and for that fact.....everywhere. Also there was some low lying clouds moving through, so today was especially fun to paint. I jumped back to the gouaches today on a piece of white bristol board.....actually comic book backing board that I have cut up and used for my own art purposes, and it's even acid free.

Cougar Peak #29

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

With this painting I was able to do get to a stage that I liked pretty quickly, so I just left it...thankfully. I had so few brush strokes put down, that I felt bad quiting at where I left off, thinking I must have to do more. But I am glad that I didn't sit down and render it to death, or lose something of what I had. I like the color palette in this one, and some of the big angular flat shapes, which I think I would have lost if I had noodled around with it much more.

Cougar Peak #28

4.75" x 6.75" NuPastel, Acrylic on Chipboard

Today I experimented again with a little bit different medium for the painting. I started out with a quick pastel sketch on chipboard, then sealed it and painted over the top of my pastel sketch with acrylics.

Cougar Peak #27

7.75" x 9.75" Acrylic on Paper

No more fog.....whaHOO!!! Finally that thick heavy fog that we have had the last week almost lifted and the mountain showed up again. So to celebrate I changed my medium, and worked at a little bit larger size today. Changing up things a bit is always nice, because it allows me to look at things a little bit different, and it always presents new challenges.

Cougar Peak #26

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Chipboard

Today was a carbon copy of yesterday, and pretty much a carbon copy of the day before. Again this painting is on a piece of chipboard. I usually try and save all bits of cool packing material out of boxes that I think would make a good surface to paint on.....how can you beat free stuff?

Cougar Peak #25

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Chipboard

Today was not much different than yesterday, so I switched off to some chipboard and tried to come up with a look that was a little bit different than yesterday, but still true to the fog that was there. It would make an interesting study some time to see how many fog variations a person could come up with and still have each one be fresh and different......I think I will save that for someone else.

Cougar Peak #24

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today the mountain was completely obliterated by fog. So I can't really paint what I can't see....but wait I did paint what I saw, or at least what was presented to me. Again I used some fairly wet washes to work up most of the painting and then a little bit of dry brush at the end to lay in the last remaining bits of snow in the field at the bottom.

Cougar Peak #23

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today the mountain had a cold wet feeling to it. There was sort of a mix of freezing rain outside, so the mountain was enveloped in layers of fog, and low lying clouds. I kept my paints a little wetter on this one, doing a lot of washes, bringing in fog and blending out parts of the detail.

Cougar Peak #22

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

Another digital painting done in Photoshop for today's post. The mountain was so dark this morning when I was viewing it, so I wanted to capture a bit of that darkness and mystery. The highlights are a bit invented, but it gave me a bit of the mood that I was looking for.

Cougar Peak #21

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Chipboard

I bought a large sheet of chipboard yesterday. It has a nice neutral medium value to work off of, and it is especially thick, so I don't have to worry about it worping at all. The mountain again was being bombarded by snow, so it is always a pleasure to paint it when something dramatic is going on.

Cougar Peak #20

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

This image gave me the chance to play with subtle changes in value, as the mountain today is completely covered in a flurry of snow. The old barn and a distant fir tree are about all that is visible, everything else is pretty much whited out.

Cougar Peak #19

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Another dusting of fresh snow today that covered the mountain side. There is sort of a grey overcast look to the mountain today, not really any type of contrast that jumps out at you and beats you over the head....every day it is something different, whether calm and subdued, or vibrant and crazy....it is always a pleasure to paint.

Cougar Peak #18

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

Today I am a bit late with my post....blame it all on ice fishing. This one again is done with Photoshop. I have been experimenting with brushes in Photoshop lately that emulate natural media pretty well like pastel etc... I'm still not quite where I want to be digitally....but I am getting closer, and experimenting is where all of the fun comes in.

Cougar Peak #17

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

The temperature has warmed up a lot from the last couple of days, and the mountain is again being covered in blankets of snow. As I was painting, a snow storm was slowly enveloping the mountain, trying to completely obscure it from my view.

Cougar Peak #16

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Another cold-n-krispy day. The mountain maintains this frosty feeling to it all day. The air is so crisp and that you can almost see little sparkles of ice dancing in the atmosphere.

Cougar Peak #15

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Again we have another day of below zero temperatures. It is amazing how much the mountain changes from one day to the next. Today we can almost get a hint of the greens of the mountain, as the bright morning light blankets it with it's intense rays of light.

Cougar Peak #14

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

Even colder today with a low of -2 degrees. I painted this images just before dark with Photoshop. I love the light late in the day when you get those deep oranges and purples on the mountain, and where only part of the mountain is lit and the rest of it is in shadow.

Cougar Peak #13

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today the mountain kind of had a frosty feel to it. We still had temperatures around 0 degrees, but of a lot of the snow has melted and only comes half way down the mountain. Again it was nice to be able paint the bright white highlights, as the morning sun rays blast the mountain top, and ignite the rock face below in a blaze of orange.

Cougar Peak #12

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache Paper

Chilly this morning with a big -5 degrees. The mountain was in full view when I started to paint and then as soon as the sun started climbing up in the sky the fog from the river started to rise. So this morning the bottom of the mountain had a chance to be obscured, and not the top, which has been the norm of late.

Cougar Peak #11

Today was a wee bit chilly, the temperature dropped down to around 7 degrees, so the mountain was crisp, some of the snow had melted and I actually had the chance to see some blue sky....which is a nice change.

Cougar Peak #10

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today started out real calm, and then by the time I started painting the snow had started flying again. It is amazing how the look of the mountain can change so quickly. With snow blowing in the values on the mountain can change instantly from being very dark and deep to a lighter airy feel.

Cougar Peak #9

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today was a calm day on the mountain, no blizzards, no rain, no hail, no wind. Everything was silent....but chilly.

Cougar Peak #8

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

This one I broke away from the gouache a bit and tried a digital Cougar Peak. I painted this one in Photoshop CS very exactly the same way I approached any of the other ones I've done. First laying down the big shapes or values, and then going in and refining, highlighting, and texturing. This was a fun one and I think I will definately try more of these.

Cougar Peak #7

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Chipboard

Today there has been a mixture of snow flurries and wind. The mountain at times is almost devoid of color during the heavy periods of snow. For this piece I worked on a piece of chipboard, which is a fancy term for cardboard, but it gives me a nice neutral value to work my values eithe up or down the scale.

Cougar Peak #6

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Snow, snow, snow and more snow. The mountain today was covered in a veil of white, like and everchanging curtain that goes to and fro, up and down, and all around.

Cougar Peak #5

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today was much the same as yesterday. We had a little bit more snow that had fallen last night, and the clouds were down not quite as low as the morning before.

Cougar Peak #4

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

This morning I woke up to a bit of fresh snow on the ground, which is always a nice change and today we get to see a bit more of the mountain.

Cougar Peak #3

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

More rain today. This one ended up having sort of the same look as yesterday.....lots of fog with bits of mountain here and there. But even with the fog the mountain was amazing as always.

Cougar Peak #2

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Day #2 in the journey......It was pretty foggy this morning, there was freezing rain falling down when I got up. Towards the end of the painting the peak decided to show through for just a second, and then it was gone again.

Cougar Peak #1

4.75" x 6.75" - Gouache on Paper


Here is the first image in a series of what will hopefully become a 365 day adventure exploring this magnificent mountain. I will attempt to do a painting a day, trying each day to capture a bit of that granduer and awe, as we slowly progress from one season to the other. It should be a fun journey artistically for me, and hopefully for you the viewer as well.