Drawing and Painting Home

Home is and always will be Wyoming.  Home is not really about the town I was born in, but more about the state where I spent the first nearly three decades of my life.  I'll always be a Wyoming girl no matter where I live.  At this point in my life when I talk about going home, I'm referring to my brother's ranch, that's home.  My heart is there, my family is there.

I've always loved taking photos at the ranch, and when we were home for Mom's memorial it was no different than all the other trips.  Spend a little time here and you'll also learn I have an infatuation or maybe even an obsession with trees, and the ranch has many old cottonwoods and cedars to make my little dendrophile heart.  

One afternoon Hubby and I were sitting in the yard listening to the birds and talking about family and what's next in our lives.  I kept studying the same tree.  Eventually, I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick pic.  I mentioned to him that I wanted to draw that tree.  

Many months later I scrolled through the photos I took to start the process to do just that.  I pulled a gel print I'd done with Distress Oxide Inks on watercolor paper and used water-reactive graphite pencils to draw the tree and build the landscape.  

Once I finished the piece I dropped it in the mail to my brother, along with a copy of the photo I'd taken.   He was touched by the piece and commended my talent.  

The photos from our trip in 2021 hold a special place for me, as that was our last visit with Mom before she passed away in 2022.  

Hubby and I spent our mornings on that visit taking a walk on the ranch, usually followed by my nephew's heard of goats, but that's a story for another day.  There was something peaceful about morning walks on the ranch.

Every morning, I pulled my DSLR out of my bag and slipped on my shoes.  I took gobs of photos, not all of them good, not all of them were in focus.  I was practicing and trying to learn the manual mode on my camera.  Not very successfully I might add.

I took scores of photos of trees, irrigation ditches, wildflowers, birds, wildlife, and ranch animals.  All of these photos have since become fodder for my journey into making artwork.  It really doesn't take much to amuse me, give me a camera and send me outside to play.  

When I began diving into watercolor on a deeper level, there was a tickle of an inkling in the back of my mind to start using my own photos for reference.  Of course, it's no surprise that I started with trees.  

This crooked tree in one of the pastures at the ranch has always captivated me with its bent gnarly trunk.  The stories an old tree like this could tell about the red desert, the valley, and the ranch would be captivating to me. 

While the sky in this photo is all but white because of the light blowout, it's not the best photo.  It provided me with the inspiration to paint the background in pale, washed-out shades of blue and green. I kept the piece simple, focusing just on the tree, and leaving out any background details.

The finished painting isn't an exact rendition, but I think it does the grand old tree justice. 

There's really something magical to me about being able to take my own photos and use them as references for my art.  

This piece is still living in my stacks of paintings in my studio for now.  I'm not ready to let it go.  I may never let it go.  There's a special memory tied to the tree, to painting it, to the ranch, to my memories of my Mom.