Monday, October 7

October 07, 2024

At my hotel's breakfast today I found this napkin and was inspired to use it like a canvas with a sharpie pen.

Today was a beautiful day. I arrived at the Battlefield around 10 AM and set up my easel near the visitor center under the shade of a large oak tree.

Earlier this morning, I had been reviewing some watercolor images of Charles M. Russell. Russell was a famed western artist who had a studio in my hometown: Great Falls, Montana. He painted in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This morning I was looking at some of his watercolor sketches – – many of them were labeled "studies", and illustrated how he practiced creating images of things like undergrowth, people, animals, trees, etc. Some of those rough "studies" appear similar to my images. These are the first two images I created today.

This image attempted to replicate the view I had from my easel, looking across the open field at the distant forest. I think I'm much better at creating imaginary landscapes than replicating real ones.

The sketch is of an imaginary landscape.

This was my next creation.

I was hoping to have strong fall colors in display this week, but most everything is still green. However, there are some leaves, turning color and falling.

After almost 4 hours of painting, my back was tired; so I packed up and explored some of the battlefield on foot.

I saw two deer along the trail. They made me think of several of Charlie Russell's watercolor sketches of deer that I had reviewed earlier today.

I thought this spot was interesting. You can still see the trenches that were dug 160 years ago. The spot marks a transition in warfare from standing and directly facing each other with rifles to trench warfare.