Saturday, February 5, 2011

An Imperial Day

An Imperial Day
8x10 - pastel on sanded paper

Another pastel break...this time to take part in the Daily Paintworks Challenge, hosted by Carol Marine.  This is the debut challenge, and sure to be hugely popular (there are close to 80 entries now!).   I have a thing for old vintage cars, both impeccably maintained beauties like this as well as those that have seen better days.  When I was in Bisbee last winter, I was lucky to have my camera along when I saw this beautiful '57 Chevy parked on a vacant street.  

It's the beautiful shine, chrome and extra details like that fancy taillight that make these cars so special.  This was a good challenge in many ways - I've never drawn or painted a car before, and I found it an absolute delight - even doing some of that insane detail which I usually try to avoid.  I'll definitely do more...

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Some photos from our Little Molas snowshoeing trip yesterday:

 A herd of elk, appearing to be mostly calves, cows and maybe yearling bulls, grazes along a field near the Animas river just north of Durango.  The only time you'll ever see elk in daylight or near town is in winter as they come down in search of food.

As luck would have it, they were close to the highway and I had the telephoto lens on the camera, so they can be seen pretty clearly!


Grenadier Range panorama
Hwy 550 is seen, and the four visible peaks are White Dome, Peak 2, Peak 3 and Arrow Peak
This is a 5-part pano with vertical orientation of images.

Extreme iridescence of cloud.

The colors here resemble nacreous, or "mother-of-pearl" clouds.  However, according to my reference, nacreous clouds are only seen during twilight hours.  It was very windy and the sky was filled with lenticular clouds - of which nacreous are a type.  What makes nacreous different than other clouds is that they are found in the stratosphere - about 2x as high as even cirrus.

Snowdon Peak panorama
View is to the south.  This is a 4-part pano with horizontal orientation of images.  DoubleTake panoramic software program used for both

8 comments:

  1. Great post! You've gotten the attitude of the Chevy - hard to believe this is your first time painting cars.

    I did a small deer pastel today, which is a first. I don't think I succeeded as well as you.

    Beautiful panoramas.

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  2. Thanks Casey! You know, after I got the initial drawing/composition finished, it was pretty straightforward - just a matter of seeing things as colors, values and abstract shapes, rather than details on a car.

    I am sure your deer pastel was a success. Besides, deer are harder to draw than cars, esp. if they have antlers...

    Thanks Helen - I'm glad you enjoyed these!

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  3. Love the car. Brings back memories of being a young kid around 4 years old and going on outings with my grandmother in her car.

    Love the photos too!

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  4. Thanks, Liz! I remember my Grandparents had one of these types of cars, although I have no idea what it was. Just that it was black, had leather sets, and had a very distinctive "car smell".

    I heard you got some wickedly cold temps a few days ago from that storm that froze everyone's pipes.

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  5. You always see the coolest clouds!

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  6. P.S. Absolutely amazing pastel of the car.

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  7. Thanks, Jala! I figured you'd dig that cloud as much as I did :).

    And the Imperial turned out a lot better than I expected !

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