Clouds on my horizon...

I'm happy to be sharing these pics with you as the monsoon season is spectacularly showing her good side around these parts...making for good inspiration and entertaining sky-gazing. Summer is coming to a close even here in the desert. The tails and trails of moisture-laden clouds spinning off both pacific hurricanes and northwest Alaska-spawned storms have been making their way into the old southwest and thus, onto my canvases. (via my new hot rod camera!) I'm gearing up for another video How-To series that will feature the ABC's of cloud making and maybe a mountain scene or two. Also, stay tuned for more info. on the painting I will be giving away around the holiday season.  Everyone who makes nice comments and shares my blog posts and video links will be made eligible.  (Let me know what subject matter would be good for the painting give-away)
PS. The coyote was captured by said "hot shot" camera about 100 yards from the house right as we were looking for Trigger the happy puppy with 4 inch legs.  They didn't catch her!

Chicago Skyline and Little Birds

End of August's joyful jaunt to Minnesota found Carmen and I  recharging our chlorophyll powered batteries and filling our yearly quota of lakes, rivers, creeks, ponds, streams and puddles viewed. I think the desert was jealous. The tales of  "water, water everywhere" (and cold tap water) were a metaphorical  babbling brook of non-stop spring-flow that bubbled and poured with gushing praise every time I parted my erstwhile sun-dried and cracked lips in a mouth-watering description of the land of 10,000 reasons to thank God... for agua. It seems that my effusive bragging on the wonderful water-founts of the north country  was just too much for the dessicated dust dwellers to stomach. They ordered a full load of H2o just to shut me up.   Almost four inches of rain gully-washed down on us here in Catalina this past Tuesday. (That is a million-year record) The usually dry creek bed that borders our little burnt piece of real estate flowed with a wild rage that effectively cut us off from civilization for ...a few hours anyway, and gave us the riverfront property I've always wished for.  It was / has been beautiful and the vengeful actions of those who ordered the rain just to spite me turned into a lush and verdant blessing of thirst quenching solace for the raisin people of the southwest. I tend to see the glass as half full as you can tell.  The birds pictured here (if you got the e-mail notification you might have to open the blogspot link to view images) were painted by Marissa. They are small ACEO paintings but they are clever and colorful and should be collectable. The Chi-town skyline was an new inspiration...gonna be messing with some cityscapes in the future so be prepared...and feel free to make requests or send photos of your favorite town. I don't have a lot of pics of cities.