More Paintings of Big Bend

I have added a few more photos of the paintings done at Big Bend.  These were a little too big to fit in my scanner and had to be photographed, downloaded and then uploaded to my blog.  Took about as long to do that as some of the paintings took to paint!  Hope you will enjoy looking at them.

Sierra del Carmen through Cottonwood Trees

Rio Grande from Boquillas Overlook

Santa Elena Canyon from the East

Window View - afternoon

My latest fantastic trip - yes, Big Bend

Returned Friday from a wonderful trip to Big Bend National Park in the SW corner of Texas separated from Mexico by the Rio Grande river.  Fabulous, beautiful, stark, colors of rock so varied, so pink, peach, purple, every shade of gray, brown and sometimes scary dark colors without names.  Cactus of every kind, pine trees, mesquite, oaks both tall and stunted. In Boot Canyon came across a stand of Maples as colorful in November as any in the NE - not mentioned in my little trail guide and a complete and brilliant surprise!
Painted every day - the weather was perfect - blue skies, 70-80 degrees daytime.  Hauled my painting gear to different places each day, endless things to paint.  Got up early to paint the famous window view with the moon still hanging in the pale blue and pink sky and then with joined Courtney, who is one of my two best hiking buddies.  We hiked up to the South Rim in the High Chisos, a 13.5 mile round trip and saw the most incredible views - the Santa Elena Canyon 20 miles away, the Sierra del Carmen which extends into Mexico and many other peaks and vistas whose names are not known to me.  If you haven't been to Big Bend you should go!
 I have posted some of the paintings from this trip.  These are small enough to be scanned so I did them right away.  The others will have to photographed first so I will do that later.
Oh, I sold a painting of the Santa Elena Canyon to a lovely couple from Switzerland who came down to the Canyon just as I had finished painting it.  It is so wonderful to find people who will see a painting they like and without hesitation just buy it.  I and all artists appreciate that sort of support.

Big Bend Mountains

Unknown Mountains - Big Bend

Big Bend - late morning

Hot sunny afternoon - no shade

Window View - early morning

Big Bend Watercolor

Lago Vista Lakeview

Deep Eddy Pool - longtime Austin favorite

Started painting at Deep Eddy about 8.00 am. Quite a few swimmers there already, still fairly cool - around 79 degrees - won't last long. Set up in the shade of some trees on the north side of pool. Wanted to show the contrast between the shade and sunlit water and include some of the swimmers. While painting I usually zone out of whatever is going on around me but I became aware of some conversations going on nearby. At that time of the day most of the swimmers are there to swim laps usually 2 to each lane and I became aware of a line that formed at some of the lanes as swimmers waited for a turn. One women was a little distressed that a swimmer was hogging the middle of the lane and she felt she couldn't swim easily without bumping the other. I recalled when I used to swim at Gregory Gym and the old Anna Hiss pool. Being a very weak swimmer I was always nervous when another swimmer got in my lane and I remember a few remarks about my slowness. The nice thing about painting plein air is that though there is a time element involved I set it myself - two to three hours depending on th composition. Longer than that, the light has changed and its time to finish.

Beryl Kerwick Paintings in Plein Air Austin Show

Award Winner

Over the years I have won quite a number of awards for my paintings including 5 Best of Show. This year my painting Blue Room was awarded the 2nd Place prize in the Waterloo Watercolor show.

BLUE ROOM

Mixing Colors - carrots

Colorful Watercolor

watercolor painting 30"x 22"

matted and framed $800.

The Pleasure of Mixing Paint Colors

The simple pleasures of mixing paints......Have you ever been in a class when someone asked what color to use to paint a certain object? Such as in a still life setup of fruits and vegetables. "What color shall I use to paint that carrot?" The great answer is that there is not a paint color called carrot. At least not that I know of. As a painting instructor, though, it is my delight to show how a carrot, a simple carrot, can be painted using mixtures of red and yellow or even cadmium orange if you have it, mixed on the palette or wet-in-wet with a little purple in the shadow, a tiny bit of pale color at the tip and a nice mix of blues and yellows and greens for the frothy carrot tops. My palette is rarely pristine but usually I have enough clear color on it at the start of a painting session so that I can get myself in a good mood just by looking at it and anticipating what I will use.