With the COVID-19 pandemic I am not working, so in theory I’m painting more. I am sitting in my studio a lot, but don’t feel like I’m accomplishing that much. That said, I recently did a painting of an abandoned cabin, from a photograph I took last fall. This cabin was in a small town called Tyro, situated on Route 56, not too far from where we live. It was early fall. The leaves on the tops of the mountains were changing, as were some at lower elevations.

I spent a lot of time on this painting compared to most. I had fun with the tree line, especially capturing the dark shadows under the umbrella of foliage. I masked out the cabin so I could do it last and I spent a good deal of time doing the detail. The finer details in this painting were done using a nib pen loaded with watercolor, a technique I’ve been using a lot since Steve Mitchell from the Mind of Watercolor introduced it to me a month or so ago.

Funny, but my husband is really bothered by the logs not being straight on the front face of the cabin. That is exactly how they were in the photograph (see below). If anything, I was frustrated that I was unable to make the cabin look rundown enough. Still, I’m happy enough with the result.

Everyone, please practice social distancing and stay well.