January 17" Snow Clouds"

What a windy cold day it was today with a20 degree temperature and west winds of 30 to 50 mph with gusts in excess of 85 mph, it made for and interesting day! Today I went to meet the Plein Air Artist in Aspen Park, CO but due to the wind everyone chose to call it a wash for the day and perhaps I to should have done the same thing. I on the other had wanted to try and paint the wind and blowing snow and when I saw the snow clouds coming of the Mt. Evans range I knew what I was going to paint. So, I headed up to a great spot to paint, set up my easel and weighed it down so it wouldn't blow away. Then I bundled up, hunkered down and began to furiously paint. I must confess I love to paint in any weather but I really dislike painting in this kind of heavy wind. It makes it hard control the brush strokes when your getting pushed around. A good thing with days like today is it makes me paint with more of a painterly look, since I need to move quickly, no time to think and tinker around with the painting because it's just to cold and windy. 

The down side for today was just as I finished painting and was packing up my gear in the back of my van when one of these 60+ mph wind gusts kicked up. When I bent over to protect the painting I didn't notice that the wind blow the hatch back of the van that was fully open half way down. Not thinking and my eyes half covered by my hat I just turned to load the easel and painting into the back when... Bam! corner of the hatch back right in the eye! Now that will wake ya up quicker than a cold wind up your back. Over all it was a great day with a memento to take home.

If you look at the photos you can see how the winds blow so much snow off the mountain that it looks like clouds above them.

"Snow Clouds" 8" x 16"

Hanging out in the wind. What looks like clouds is snow blowing of Mt. Evans.

One of the heavy gusts.

My memento, an  improvement to my ugly mug.