Our visit to Bryce Arboretum last month included some stunning landscapes.
I decided to experiment a bit and went larger than I usually paint; this time 8×10 rather than 5×7. The combination of mountains in the background, trees and bushes in the mid-ground and yucca trees/plants in the foreground gave me a chance apply wash first rather than adding wash after the pen & ink. Continue reading Arizona Landscapes
Last month Ilene and I got up early the day after attending our niece’s wedding and drove out to Bryce Arboretum our way into Phoenix.
What a joy to walk through this island in the desert filled with plants able to live in the harsh Sonora-Arizona Desert. We spent about three hours wandering the paths taking photos of plants, trees, and landscapes.
I also spent at least two hours cursing myself for not bringing my sketchbook and paints with me…argh! Oh well, at least we have photos.
This painting is of one of the red agave plants that had bloomed and was beginning to lose the rich red flowers it bears at the height of the bloom. The original of this work is 5 x 7 on Arches paper and is for sale for $49.99 or if you’d like a print please contact me by leaving a comment below.
Thanks for visiting! Now go make some art!
I attended a watercolor workshop a couple of weeks ago put on by Nan Henke, a local artist here in the Texas Hill Country. As I am a self-taught artist I try to attend as many workshops that I have time to attend and money to spend.
Nan’s workshop was informative and fun! Focusing on basics and painting a loose landscape made everyone feel comfortable and successful at watercolors.
My personal takeaways were:
Continue reading Playing It Loose
Willkommen in Fredericksburg, or Welcome to Fredericksburg!
Limestone buildings unique to the Texas Hill Country line Main Street in Fredericksburg and give one the feeling you’ve left the good old US of A and entered a country filled with cowboys and Indians, princes, and barons. This is the Texas of the mid 1800’s before the Civil War and not so soon after Texas won its independence from Mexico. Continue reading Willkommen in Fredericksburg
We were originally scheduled to leave Texan RV Park here in Athens, TX for The Vineyard at Fredericksburg RV Park this morning. Weather, however, can be a bit fickle in this part of the world this time of year and right now we’re still in Athens watching the raindrops fall.
One of the nice things about the RVing Lifestyle, and being retired, is the flexibility to not have take chances when it comes to road conditions. The forecast for our destination is for thunderstorms. Along with thunderstorms come hail, high winds, and the possibility of tornadoes. Continue reading Watching the Raindrops Fall
Imagine our surprise when our friends Hoss and Janet pulled into Texan RV Park the day before the NRVIA Conference! We’d expected them the following week and certainly not staying at Texan RV Park! They showed up just in time for Hoss to help a friend of ours back his fifth wheel into the spot next to us. Seems they’d had the 5’ver for some time but never had to back it into a spot!
We had time to get caught up that day and part of the next day while we prepared for the conference, but once the conference started we were pretty busy and only had time to visit in the late evening. Monday and Tuesday I attended Lippert Component Training learning about levelers, slideouts, awnings and other Lippert systems. Continue reading Hanging Out In Athens, TX
Well we made it to Athens, TX on Monday afternoon where we’ll be for the next two weeks.
Athens is the home of the new National RV Training Academy (NRVTA) and headquarters for the National RV Inspectors Association (NRVIA). This year the NRVIA is having its 5th Annual Conference here at the Texan RV Park.
The President and Director of the NRVIA purchased the Texan RV Park last year with the vision of seeing the park, and the NRVTA, become a hub of RV training for technicians, mobile & RV dealer service technicians, RV inspectors, and consumer training. Continue reading Made It To Athens, TX
One of the most exciting things about living a full-time RVing lifestyle is the ability to go places and see things most of us miss as life gets in the way.
When people ask us why we chose to live this lifestyle we tell them how with me growing up in the military then spending a career in the military we got to see a lot of America…with our noses pressed against a car window. It seemed like we always had to get someplace and never had the time to stop and see the REAL America we’d heard about and seen on Charles Kuralt’s “On the Road”. Continue reading I Remember Charles Kuralt
Well we thought we were going to winter in Las Vegas and Mesa this year but after heading East to Texas for our National RV Inspectors Association Conference we got to thinking…
We’d already driven from Florida to Vegas then up into Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington this year and worked our way back to see the Reno Air Races and visit the kids. By traveling to Texas then back to Vegas only to turn around in April and travel all the way back to North Carolina for our Workamper job at Moonshine Creek Campground seemed a waste of time and money. Continue reading A Change of Plans for 2018
Well our time in Winnemucca was pretty much uneventful so we left the next morning for West Wendover, NV. Wendover Army Airfield was where the crew of the Enola Gay trained in their B-29 to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
A nice museum with plenty of photos and memorabilia is located in the restored John T. Brinkman Service Club. There’s an informative seven minute long video about the base that we’d highly recommend watching as well as several rooms dedicated to the young men who trained at Wendover as well as the civilians who supported them. Continue reading Enola Gay Hangar
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