Grand Portage, Minnesota.......

Another older painting to share with  you today.  I painted this in the summer of 1992 in oils.  The scene is a large opening overlooking Lake Superior.  The tepee was there but the rest came from imagination. 

Grand Portage is one of the last towns at the top of Minnesota on the North Shore.  It is Indian Reservation Territory and there is a recreated structure of the actual fort or trading post that sat there.  The mountains to the left are sitting on a projection of land that helps to make that curved shape of the states form.

I won't critique my own work with this one, but as an art teacher I can see that I have three different paintings that could have been cropped out of this painting.

I find myself evaluating my older work to help me to improve on my work. Composition is important and in each of the three cropped photos you can see different things take on  different importance.  It may be the tepee, or the tree, or the sky itself. In many ways the foreground of the original work could have been deleted and the painting could have been painted on the horizontal.

The addition of a sea gull would help any balance problems created by cropping.  I will leave it all alone and maybe I can start a new painting perfecting the painting that was done 18 years ago.

Computer Design.............

As a computer graphics design instructor,  I had to develop creative projects that encouraged student to learn the different tools of a design program.  This quilt design is actually two captured squares from a photo of a hot air balloon.  The two shapes were cut and pasted into this quilt design.  I have a lot of different creations of mine I will share as I get them downloaded.  They are archived on CDs.

The lost farm..........

This is a watercolor I painted a few years back as a commission.  The farm belonged to my client's family and it was destroyed for the making of a lake here in Iowa.  The land itself became a waterway and is not under water today.  As an artist one tends to paint tightly to depict all the details that the person wants, more that to make a painterly work.  I painted in the tractor and the old family car to  make sure they could identify with the place.  In reality I am sure the buildings were not well painted and the house probably needed a coat of paint.