View of Lone Peak, summer

I did a lot of painting in Montana this summer but this is the only painting I finished.  The view is from the meadow at a house that's for sale which is actually about 6 miles, maybe even 7, from the base of Lone Peak.

The challenge of painting a meadow is one I tackled more than once with some success and a lot of "needs more study".  There's the issue of making the grass look grassy without the fussiness of painting individual plants; there's the need to show flowers but not every single one; and there's the way that light catches areas of grass or the tips of plants at different times of day.  And the look of a meadow is greatly affected by how dry the summer has been -- whether there's a tinge of gold or wheat to the lightest grasses.

In mid-July when I painted this, there were still areas of snow visible on the peak.  By August, they were gone.

I've shipped the unfinished paintings to my studio in Bethesda and I'll be working on either finishing them or using them as studies for larger paintings.