It's Monday morning and I'm a little sore from my annual fall foliage hike. I ended up going to the Slippery Rock Gorge Trail in Mcconnell's Mills State Park. If you look in the picture at the left, the gorge is between the mass of nice foliage in the front and the hills in the distance. The trees as you can see have not turned all the way, but it led to some nice photos anyway. The weather was just beautiful and I passed by more people hiking then I normally do.

  Now I'll look at my photos and see what ideas for some new framed oil paintings I can come up with. I like to combine parts of photos and of course add or subtract elements to make a really nice painting. Another thing that I like to do is to sometimes go into Photoshop and try some "modifications". All and all, I still prefer to do most of my framed oil paintings without any reference material but do enjoy using my reference photos this way as well.
 
  Getting back to business, as you know I lost my art teacher last week and decided to reflect and think about what she meant to me. I loved how she let you be in control of what you wanted to paint. She never had a painting up on the wall that the entire class had to copy and learn from. She had a large box of photos and art books, and pictures cut out from magazines that we could go thru and select for our next "masterpiece". All she really did is show you how to paint what you want, the way you want and that is why all of her students including me are confident painters without fear of "making mistakes", loving what we do.
 
  Speaking of paintings, I have a new framed oil painting that is just about done and should be posted here soon. As always please feel free to leave a post with your thoughts and comments and I'll see you on Wednesday!