dog patch

Our friends have a small cabin near Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, which everyone refers to as "dog patch".  It's about and hour and a half drive from our place.  Well water and woodstoves - no electricity or plumbing, no phones, cable or internet.  Last week we went up to this cabin for a day away from the city, and I brought my painting kit and camera.

About an hour out, we drove through a black thunderstorm which passed over the land quick and intense.

It was one of those cloudy-sunny days which makes for wonderful skies.  My camera does not catch it very well, but my painting catches a bit of it.  I like to paint the distant views, and here I just fudged in the foreground because I didn't want to get caught up in all those trees with their trunks and branches and leaves.  Better, I thought, to suggest a simple verge.

The 3 brushes I used for the first painting, here posed on the other side of the cabin.

Second painting was the view just to the left of my posed brushes.  There is a slough at the bottom of the hill and the sunlight, winking in and out of clouds, was glinting and shimmering on the surface of the water.  

Everything was in quick motion this day.  I love painting when the world is full of dodging light and shifting skies.  One has to work fast in trying to catch the spirit, and this is generally a good thing with plein-air work, at least for me.

Getting back into Calgary, where more thunderstorms were brewing.  After the recent flooding, this was not a welcome sight.  Luckily it didn't rain much and the river continues to ebb.