A Day in Corrales

 A Day in Corrales

I am among thirty other painters participating 

in the first ever Corrales Plein Air event.

We have descended on the village of Corrales for five days of artist bliss - 

finding the perfect spots to paint,

lugging all of our painting gear around,

a kick-off party on Monday evening,

five days of painting,

a Quick Draw competition this wekend,

and an exhibition opening at Gathering Artists Gallery on Saturday.

A few scenes of life in Corrales:

 red chile ristras, of course

 an old red truck - gotta have one of those

 a view from my car of one of the long winding Corrales dirt roads 

 This is the first spot I picked to paint - the old Corrales church.

 My beginning block-in. 

I ended up taking this painting home and scraping it all off.

It just felt really washed out and blah.

 Some of my fellow painters

 The Sandia mountains and the chile fields

 I'd like to say this is a meadow but it's not.

It's a beautiful planting of cosmos in front of someone's house.

 My favorite house in Corrales.

I painted it!

 One of the ditches overflowing with native sunflowers

 A cool old wagon

 Now this is what I call free range chickens!

This guy came out and his chickens all ran to him.

He started throwing grain all over the yard and those chickens went crazy.

I'm thinking he had about a hundred chickens. 

And a really cool chicken coop.

 A beautiful panoramic view of the Sandia mountains.

 I peeked into someone's gate, very very pretty.

 More painters, these artists are painting in the courtyard of Casa San Isidro,

a really old adobe house filled with all things vintage New Mexican.

 Another painter near the old church.

Sunflowers that I painted today.

All paintings are supposed to be 80% plein air,

which means I may do a little finessing in the studio in the next few days.

 Corrales always has the coolest scarecrows.

I couldn't NOT paint him!

One of the houses I painted.

These are not my usual colors.

Oh, they are the same paints I always use.

They just mix differently when you're out in nature.

Takes some getting used to.

Tomorrow I will talk more about my tools and my plein air experience.

tools rule

 As most of you know, my trusty Canon Powershot camera broke 

and I've been using my tiny tiny Sony Cybershot until I'm able to go camera shopping.

I think I finally figured out how to take close ups with this little one, 
but I feel like I'm using a child's toy!

 Wow, it was warm yesterday and all of my apricot buds opened up.

They are absolutely beautiful.

It's been so warm here- no winter at all - that I didn't even have time to prune anything.

I guess I can do it anyway, maybe the apricots will be bigger in the end.

 Another group of open blossoms.

I never knew that apricots had such pretty blooms - look at all of that red and yellow!

This is a peach blossom. 

Now this tree actually looks a little scraggly - but last year it gave us tons of peaches. 

I'll take more photos in a few days and see if it looks better.

This tree should have definitely been pruned in early January.

 This is a morning "rays of sunshine" view of my field and old garden spot.

That's Bella looking beautiful.

On to the studio.....

 I make lists. Lots of lists.

I make lists of lists.

I may have five lists going on at once, overlapping chores, projects, and the like.

I also have this write-on wipe-off planner up in my studio and I NEVER use it.

My kids (specifically my son-in-law) thinks it's very funny to write things on it.

So he made me an appointment on my planner to write on my planner. Cute.

 I went crazy shopping yesterday. 

No, not for paints or canvas or brushes.

I went tool shopping.

I was looking for a tool that fellow artist Julie Ford Oliver 

uses in her work and was nice enough to share with the world.

I went to Lowe's, Wal Mart, Home Depot, and couldn't find it.

So I emailed her and she answered right back and said she buys them at Harbor Tools.

There was one right around the corner, 

so I checked it out and I AM IN LOVE with Harbor Tools..

They have tools! So many tools! I went crazy just looking at the hammer aisle.

I bought the tool I was looking for and several that I wasn't.

At the end of the day, between all the stores, I came home with:

six pairs of gardening gloves

loping shears

rose pruning clippers

pruning clippers

four box cutting tools

two paint scraping tools

one window squeegee

SCORE.

Julie, I hope to do you proud and I thank you.

 This is the tool I was looking for.

Made in China - wouldn't you know?

 In other news, here is a sweet little wooden house I am painting for a fundraiser, 

I think the event is called "ALBUQUIRKY LITTLE HOUSES" or something like that. 

It's basically just two blocks of wood with a little piece of wood for he chimney.

Any suggestions as to what I should do?

This is my daily painting for today.

I have loosely sketched it - and I mean very loosely.

This comes from a  blurry photo of a lovely garden up in Abiquiu.

And last but not least, I am having eight 30x30 really deep canvases

stretched for the upcoming Weems show "FLOWERS AND VEGGIES."

The first one should be ready this week. I'm so excited!
These are really deep and will be painted around the sides.

AND, great news, I have been commissioned to do a 22x28 painting for the 

LUNA MANSION

in Los Lunas, New Mexico.

It will be a horizontal piece and a composite of four photos:

the Los Lunas hill, the nearby farming fields, and ditches and cottonwoods.

More on this story coming up......