Montana Painting In Progress

I'm just back from Montana -- an amazing landscape that I was desperate to paint.  No time to paint, but also, Montana's Paradise Valley is a very windy place.  A large canvas wouldn't stand a chance, so I took a lot of photos so I could return to the studio and work on what I'd seen.

The canvas for this painting in progress is hanging on the wall, so I'm painting standing up. I used to paint all the time standing up (like the Sundance Kid, I'm better when I move), but my long agonizing knee troubles forced me to paint sitting down for the past couple of years.  But now!  New knees, and I am very happy that standing up feels great.  I'm enjoying painting standing up again, and especially, the ease of painting, standing back from the work, and then painting again.

This is a sunset view from the log cabin where I stayed, looking toward the Gallatin mountains that make up the West side of Paradise Valley.  I have a lot of work to do on this, but this is how it's starting out.