Our cabin is backstopped by the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. I have to look up at a really steep angle to see the sky. When I look straight out from the front porch all I see in ascending earth covered with trees and brush….pretty nice.
Plein Aire quick draw, one hour sketch.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/jean-krueger/plein-aire-zac/763810
Looking south, the broadside of barns, bright sun flushes the knolls and ruts, the Sunday afternoon slips by.
Looking southeast, the barns, the fences, the hills and mountains beyond glow in the mid morning sun. The horses are out to pasture.
Looking north in the late afternoon sun the fence posts march into the autumn pasture bleached by summer sun now departed.
The oaks are starting to change colors here in the Colorado montane. The colors will be in the yellow/brown range this year due to the conditions that prevailed around here last summer. The leaves will fall by November and re-emerge next May, one of life’s comforting certainties.
This variety of rose grows in the woods where we live. They bloom in July in the montane and when they’ve ripend they produce a crimson hip, plump and shiney.
This is the view out our western window…sorta.
Just three trees in the late afternoon sun, washed and warmed by the horizontal light.
There’s and old, old apple tree at the Comanche Venable trailhead in Colorado. No one tends it now but the browsing deer. It’s grown scraggely and wide as the years pass. In spring its whitepink blooms billow in the montane sun. By September the fruit finally ripens to a sour, wormy greenred, hard and plump, abundant til they freeze and fall in the darkening days of autumn. The tree is a touchstone within my Rocky Mountain life.
I walk in this montane woods. When the wind moves so do the trees, interacting with one another as the gusts direct, sorta choreographed, I think.
Plein Aire in Victor, Colorado, September 2019.
Painted at a Plein Aire event, Victor, CO.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/jean-krueger/laundry/760060
This was painted at a plein aire event in Victpor Colorado. The elvation there is above 10,000 ft. The air is very clear and clean making the sky a brillient cerulean blue.
There’s been a lot of rain this summer, the farmers have mowed a couple times already. Late in the afternoon, sometimes towards evening, the clouds gather along the mountain ridge. When they hit the tops of the mountains they just dump all the moisture they hold. The sun shines through the veil of water and is quite lovely.
We up here to Goodwin Lake to fish in the summer. The elevation is about 11,200 ft. There’s deer and marmots there, eagles and crows. Elk are also around, but I’ve never seen one.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/jean-krueger/goodwin-lake-colorado/759869
Summer time recreation includes camping. This site is in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and it’s a National Parks Facility. Come visit someday, the natural beauty is stunning.
Colorado Blue Spruce thrives in the Colorado montane where we spend summers. The tree is making a comeback after having been severely attacked by a beetle that plagued the species ten or more years ago. They grow tall an thick, their neighbors are the ponderosa and fir trees in the area in which we live. Their foliage is a light turquoise mixed with deeper blue greens, the needles are short and quite densely spaced.
The cones shown here are from the Limber Pine. They are shown in an unripened stage, as they mature they’ll turn brown. I found these while walking in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Colorado.
Rangler, gouache, 9×12″, 2018, copyrighted with all rights reserved by Jean Krueger
Not his first rodeo.
Jean Krueger Fine Art 