River Painting Update

A while ago I posted a couple versions of this painting I've been working on of part of the Snake River in Oregon where my mother-in-law grew up. Well I've still been working on it and I've almost entirely repainted it. I was able to salvage most of the sky, but the island and water was completely scrapped and repainted. I am pleased with most of the changes but there are some tweaks I would make. I waiting for some feedback from my mother-in-law since she comissioned it, so maybe I'll have more changes than I think. We'll see. Anyway here's the latest version of it.

And here's the Tractor

I posted some photos I took of a tractor on the farm where my mother-in-law was raised. They were all little details of the tractor that I thought were interesting. As I looked at them again it made me think back to what that day looked like and more importantly, what that old tractor looked like. It's a little bit surreal thinking back on that. There are some very beautiful and picturesque views on that little farm. This is one of them I think. That little island is very peaceful. My wife Michelle and her brothers and sisters spent a lot of time up there while they were growing up and they've got lots of memories on that island. I just have a few, but the few I have are pretty neat.

Nothing like a good tractor

I've had these photos for a while. I took them a couple years ago at the farm where my mother-in-law was raised in eastern Oregon. The farm has an island out in the middle of the snake river (actually the same island that's in the painting I've been working on). On that island they grow melons and the day we were there, an old Massey Ferguson tractor was sitting out in the field and it was just way too interesting to not take some pictures of. So here are some that I took.

Happy Halloween

This was a really quick little sketch I did for our latest art challenge at work. The topic was "woggle of witches" kind of like a gaggle of geese. I didn't get the whole "woggle" and just have one witch, but it was fun. I was trying out some new custom brushes that I made in photoshop, so this painting was mostly experimenting with new brushes. I'm still learning how to use them, but I'm excited about how they worked for a first try.

Weekly Figure Drawings

I've been meaning to post some of these drawings I've been doing over the past several weeks. At work we have a weekly figure drawing session. I've been excited to get back into figure drawing because it helps the rest of my artwork so much. I have been very out of practice. Prior to these sessions at work which I started going to just a few months ago, I hadn't done any figure drawing since school and that was over 10 years ago. This is one area where you can really struggle if you don't practice consistently. Most of these drawings have been very frustrating as I try to re-learn these skills. But each week it seems to get a little better.

The right Hitman for the job!

I did this for our weekly art activity at work. Hope you like it. It was done really quickly.

Progress on River Painting

I've made some adjustments to the river painting I posted a while ago. I've changed the lightsource as per my mother-in-laws request. Now the sun is just off the right hand side of the painting and slightly higher in the sky rather than lower and behind the trees. This is more accurate to how it really is. However this required that I completely repaint the sky along with a good portion of the painting since the light changed on the trees and water too. It's coming along but I still have some changes I need to make. I need to rework the trees (particularly along the shore) and make them more willow-like. I'm pleased with the lighting and color for the most part, it's just down to details at this point......I think.

Update on the yard.

Well our sprinklers are done and our sod has been laid. Very nice to have a useable yard finally. We're stoked to be able to have the whole summer to enjoy the yard now. We'll slowly be buying trees and shrubs etc to fill in all the flower beds but that's going to take some time. OH well, at least we have grass instead of dirt. The picture of our back yard is just before we finished laying the last big of sod.

Spent the weekend in Moab

I took Michelle and the boys to Moab over the weekend with some friends from our Land Cruiser club. We had a great time camping and driving on some really fun trails. We saw some amazing scenery that I hadn't seen before.

This first picture was near Dead Horse Point, just before we headed down Long Canyon. Long Canyon is a beautiful road that isn't that difficult but has scenery that's hard to beat.

The second picture is all of us standing near the edge of the rim above Kane Creek road. Hard to tell in the picture but we are about 900' above the canyon floor and about 10' from the edge. Weee!

If you'd like to see the rest of the pictures, you can see them here. [url]http://www.fjexpedition.com/pics/gallery/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=19904[/url] There are lots, over 400 shots mostly of the Land Cruisers on the trails.

Our yard's going in!

Well we've started to get our yard in finally on the house. We have a neighbor that owns a landscaping company and he made us a good deal on the sprinklers and sod. That's all we're doing at the moment since that's all we can afford right now, but we'll peice it together slowly. As it sits right now they are just about done with the sprinklers. They should finish them up tomorrow and get the initial grade done on the yard. Then we have 4 big trucks worth of topsoil coming in. I'm renting a skid loader from the landscape guy to use to get the topsoil spread. (that's part we're doing on our own) It's gonna be a busy weekend. Enjoy the pictures. Lots and lots of dirt. Can't wait until we've got some grass. Another couple weeks and we should be set. I'm feeling extremely lucky that we've been able to afford to have the sprinklers done professionally. Sprinklers aren't really that difficult but they can take a long time and when I did our own sprinklers in our last house, that was enough. So this will be good. :)

Here's a shot of the front of the house. I'll show the yard in the next few.

Since we're in a cul-de-sac our front yard in fairly narrow. We having some concrete work done where they'll be enlarging our back patio and putting an RV pad along the side of the house by the garage.

This next picture is from the southwest corner of our yard. You can see our relatively small front yard.

Now for the backyard. This will be my nemesis this summer. We've got a 1/2 acre lot and nearly all of it is in the back. We don't have a riding lawn mower (yet) so this could literally take me all day to mow with our mower. It's going to be really nice for the boys but it will be some work. You can see a little bit of our patio that will double in size. Also the RV pad will come all the way along the side of the house to the back corner of the house. This corner where I'm taking the picture will be a 30x30' section that will be bark or something on the ground where we can put a playground and the trampoline for the boys. And our neighbors on this side are putting in a fence right away so we'll have a fence down this side about to where the back of the white trailer is parked.

One last one for now. This is the back yard looking from the northwest corner. All the way along the fence in the left side of this picture will be a bed about 10' wide for trees and bushes to hopefully give us a little privacy from neighbors. You can also see blue flags along the right hand side that are approximately where the other property line is. We will eventually have a fence here as well along with more trees and bushes, again as some added privacy. The west side of the house here (just right on the side, not into the backyard) will be our garden for vegetables, and berries and a couple fruit trees. This garden will be enclosed by a fence along the property line and across the front, and will have a short stone wall with a trellis entrance from the back yard. Hard to envision but that's the plan. Hope you like it.