Sugaring-Season Barn

One of my favorite places in the world: "Dumdum's" Farm in West Fairlee, VT. Growing up, we'd go to the farm every sugaring season, Easter, and thanksgiving, as well as random other times to help my grandpa get in the sugar wood or do work around the farm. This year sugaring season came early and was very short. I only got in one solid day of sugaring between ski races and travel. But it was a beautiful bluebird sugaring-season day, and we did a little bit of everything--tapped trees, checked the lines, hiked to the top of the hill, boiled all day, made several batches of syrup, and did a lot of sitting out in the sun.

Watercolor, 9x12.

Well, I went for too long without painting or posting anything here. That long without any art is bad for my sanity!

I decided that I wanted to paint something fun and quick, and I'd had so much fun painting that bright sunset that I decided to just do another variation of it! Sunsets are great because they change quickly so you can take lots of pictures that look pretty different. Plus they're basically just an abstraction anyway, so its a great opportunity to just get the page really wet and slap on lots of brightly colored paint and let it all run together and see what happens. I normally paint on dry paper and don't take much advantage of the bleeding effects of watercolor, so this was a good little break from being meticulous all the time.