Cougar Peak #59

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

WAHOOO!!...now we can scratch off the month of February. For the last day of the month I jumped on Photoshop and played around with painting value shapes. The mountain got blasted with a batch of fresh snow, and as we are coming up on March we might not have too many more of those....except living in Montana, nothing is set in stone, and March can be anything but spring like.

Since it is the end of the month, I have again attached a month in review for February which allows you to look at the month as a whole.

Cougar Peak #58

4.75" x 6.75" Acrylic/Pastel on Paper

This one is another acrylic/pastel combo.....which ended up being more acrylic in the end. The mountain had this layer of fog that the sun was burning through a quite a fast pace, so every now and then the very peak would show up and disappear. This allowed the sun to brighten up things a bit more than the days when the fog is the dominant force.

Cougar Peak #57

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

For today's painting I switched back over to digital. I bought the new Painter X other day, was I was wanting to play around with that some more. I tried to give this piece a little bit moodier atmosphere, and I also popped the colors out a bit more on this one.

Cougar Peak #56

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

A little bit of sunlight today hitting the mountain, which is always a nice thing to see. That little bit of sunlight really warms up the mountain and starts to bring out the warmer greens and all of the earth tones, but the areas that have the snow they are all bathed in blue.

Cougar Peak #55

4.75" x 6.75" Acrylic/Pastel on Paper

I mixed things up a little bit today, and did a mixture of pastel and acrylic on comic backer board. I laid down the pastel first as an under drawing and then came back in over the top with washes of acrylic. It ends up creating some nice textures and color variations I would not of normally have gotten with just straight paint.

Cougar Peak #54

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

I had the fine pleasure today of getting to paint Cougar Peak today with my good friend Jake. He ended up painting a version of the mountain as well that was wonderfully expressive an imaginative, seen here. I did mine with gouache and he did his with a mixture of acrylic and nupastel, with a touch of Photoshop CS on the side....sounds like a mixed drink.

Cougar Peak #53

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Another beautiful snowy day on the mountain. Everything has such a crisp and clean feeling to it, I suppose we partly get that from the contrast that is created between the white of the snow against the darker values of the rocks, trees, etc...., and partly because we think of snow as being clean, pure, fresh, cold.

Cougar Peak #52

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

The mountain today was crisp and clean with a fresh blanket of new snow. Again this image was very much a monochromatic painting, as the white of the snow seems to suck out all of the color from everything around it.

Cougar Peak #51

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today was rather wet and sloppy. We have had a lot of rain lately and everything is like a big sponge that is ready to explode. For this image I stayed with pretty much greys and just a little hint of ochre in the field in the foreground. The clouds I laid down in white and then blended them down and up to make a soft transition.

Cougar Peak #50

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

For today's image I jumped back onto the computer. The main part of the image was painted in Painter 9 and then I put on a final few touches in Photoshop. I am trying to get more comfortable using Painter, but it is coming slowly. I have used Photoshop for so long and there is so much I like about it, especially it's ease of use. Except Painter does have a lot of really nice features as well. I guess I just get frustrated, because I can't do it quite as fast, or at least as smoothly as I can in Photoshop.

Cougar Peak #49

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Todays painting sort of has a rainbow of fruity flavors. The sun came out a bit today and gave everything sort of an early spring feeling. The the mountain is actually lit up in some greens and a few warmer tones, while the top of the mountain is all cold with blues and purples. Just toward the end of my painting a flurry of snow hit the top of the mountain....so of course I had to incorporate that into the image as well.

Cougar Peak #48

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Chipboard

Today's painting I switched over to a piece of chipboard. I like working on that because it gives me a nice neutral value to work up or down. For the first part of the painting I tried to keep my paints a little bit soupy, and allow them to puddle here and there. After that i went in with a smaller brush and did some of the detailing, keeping my paint not so wet.

Cougar Peak #47

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

The mountain is back....or at least the sun is back. It has been a good couple of weeks since we have seen the sunlight, and that is always a welcome pleasure. It was nice to be able to paint the whole mountain again, and to be able to see that fresh snow on the peak.

Cougar Peak #46

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

I had a lot of fun with this one. The mountain was so monochromatic when I started painting this morning that I made a conscious decision to leave it that way, and concentrate on the shapes and values instead of trying to mix the proper color.

Cougar Peak #45

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

The mountain had a very cold dead feeling to it this morning. There was a lot of clouds and fog moving through where one minute there would be an opening and then it would become obsured....so I just combined all of the patterns that I liked into a composition that pleased my eye.

Cougar Peak #44

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

I jumped back to some gouache today. I've been doing digital paintings the last week or so, just experimenting with all of that fog. So today since I could see the mountain I wanted to have a real brush in my hand, smell the paint, and hear the sound of it scraping across the paper.

Cougar Peak #43

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

Finally the clouds and fog lifted today and most of the mountain was visible again...with fresh snow. I love the look of fresh snow mixed in with the fog and the dreary feeling of rain. In my opinion it just seems to make everything seem that much colder.

Cougar Peak #42

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

Another foggy day today, but the mountain did peek out from behind the fog just to say hi. Even though there is fog everyday, still it is always a little bit different. Amazingly it still mangages to stay exciting and interesting....and i am far from saying I've mastered it yet.

Cougar Peak #41

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

Today the fog was buried in the mountainside, unmovable, unshakable, like concrete. I was hoping that it would lift as some point throughout the day.....but it stayed right in the same spot all day. So I experimented a little bit digitally, painting with shapes and textures.

Cougar Peak #40

4.75" x 6.75" Acrylic on Paper

Today when I started painting I couldn't even see the distant barn and tree. Luckily though the fog shifted a bit and gave me something to paint....which wasn't much. Right at the end of my painting though it shifted up even higher and out popped this dark blue of the mountain side.

Cougar Peak #39

4.75" x 6.75" Acrylic on Paper

Today more acrylic...and of course more fog. So I played around with broader looser strokes for the fog and tried to load the paint up on my brush a little bit more. So even though the mountain was hidden again, I still had fun playing around varying the paint and my strokes a bit.

Cougar Peak #38

4.75" x 6.75" Acrylic on Paper

Fog, rain, snow, more fog, snow, rain......so today more fog, but fog is not all bad. Fog is actually pretty cool and adds a lot of nice atmosphere to piece, also it can take on a bunch of really cool shapes, as well as stick and wind its way through the trees and hills. So today I jumped back over to acylic, just to try something different and hopefully get a new take on the fog.

Cougar Peak #37

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

Today there was more fog covering the mountain. Unfortunately it is one of those frequent occurrences in the winter. But the mountain did show through for just a few minutes and created somewhat of an interesting composition, or at least more interesting than just blank white.

Cougar Peak #36

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

There was a little bit of freezing rain on today's post. I like the whispy type of clouds that were blowing through and hiding in the little crooks of the mountain. I like this palette, it has a very muted blue grey feeling to it with a few earthy accent colors.

Cougar Peak #35

4.75" x 6.75" Digital

I love the look of the late evening sun when it hits against the snow, and the mountain side. A little bit of the snow got melted and blown off during the day, so when the sun hit against it some of the greens of the mountain were allowed to come through again......a hint of coming attractions.

Cougar Peak #34

4.75" x 6.75" Ink/Gouache on Paper

Today I tried out some Japanesse ink pens that I picked up last summer. I laid down the ink first and then painted over the top of that with washes of paint. After that I came back in and laid in the final touches in in again.

Cougar Peak #33

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache on Paper

More fresh snow today, the mountain is one big mix of cool blues and grays. Still there is something different everyday, whether there is a storm going on up the canyon, clouds moving in, sun shining, every day is something different on the mountain....I guess that is what makes it so interesting and exciting for me to paint.

Cougar Peak #32

4.75" x 6.75" Gouache/Digital

So for the first day of February the mountain is obscured by snow. I did an initial painting in gouache of pretty much your typical white out, but when I scanned it in I decided to repaint over my initial painting in photoshop a bit. It is still a whiteout, but with a little different take on it. I altered my palette a bit and added a bit more texture to the blinding snow.