The January thaw

I'm posting something different today... something that requires quite a bit of courage. I'm posting a watercolor landscape painting. I haven't painted a landscape in watercolor for a very long time... probably over a decade (if not more).

After I wrote my last post, I felt this urge to paint. It was the kind of urge that drives from a place deep inside like something needing a way to get out. That urge doesn't come very often. For many years it didn't come at all, and I never thought it would again. But a couple of days ago it did.

I taped up the watercolor paper onto my painting board, pulled out the paints and parked in front of the easel. I just started putting water and paint on the paper without any idea of what it would become or what I was painting. I was thinking I'd probably end up with a texture I could use for my Photoshop work.

I was way off.

In the end, I found myself with a landscape painting of the January thaw that often happened in the Rockies when I was small. For a brief time almost every January, the sun would come out, the temperature would rise and some of the snow would melt. It would be a brief respite before more snow would begin to fall again.

The painting really isn't that good, but I painted a landscape and that's a very good thing!