Photo of the Day: Idaho Farm Sunset

 Today, we went for a drive.  It's been raining for the last few days, which caused all of our snow to melt... so you can just imagine how incredibly sloppy it is out there.  The overcast skies make for some GREAT lighting though, and I was able to snap this photo of a farm against the beautiful sunset.  We also saw about 25 pheasants in an adjacent field.  It was just neat!

Hunting in the Owyhees

This photo is one of my favorites - it captures the scale and terrain that makes hunting in the Owyhee Mountains of Idaho so unique. The unwitting subjects of this photo are my husband, Greg, and his dog, Jennie, a Vizsla.. Here they are looking for chuckars, on a clear fall day. Later on that same day, Jennie scented one and chased it up a big plateau... and got so far ahead of us that Greg had to fire his shotgun in the air to get her attention.  I think those two would hunt every day if they had the chance!  It's so interesting and fun to watch a dog work with her master for a common goal!

Road Trip to McCall, Part 4: Cattails

Cattails are just the neatest plant.  In addition to being really interesting visually, they had many uses among Native American tribes.  The downy material in the flower was used for tinder for starting fires, lining for moccasins, bedding, diapers (due to its absorbency), and for papoose boards. 

These cattails were located just across the road from the reindeer in the last series post. 

Road Trip to McCall, Part 3: Eight Tiny Reindeer

(Click photo to enlarge)

Actually, there were a lot more than eight... we found these reindeer in a meadow between Donnelly and McCall.  They are being raised on a farm.  The buck was quite concerned with keeping his herd together and under control.  He made these strange sounds (they sounded quite a lot like a very loud belch) to keep everyone where he wanted them.  They were very tiny - I am not sure what breed of reindeer they are... but they were quite adorable. 

Road Trip to McCall, Part 2: Mending Fences

Sometimes the most commonplace objects can make interesting subjects - if you can just find the right angle.  And that's what this photo's all about - angles.  The angle of the horizon, the angle of the barbed wire, the angle of the fence posts.  This barbed wire fence was right next to the old barn in yesterday's photo.  I desaturated the colors since they were washed out, and since I wanted to focus on the contrast of the barbed wire against the background.

Home for the Holiday - Number Hill (Arco, Idaho)

One of my favorite sights on the drive home from Idaho to Montana is Number Hill in Arco, Idaho.  Arco's claim to fame is that it was the first community in the world to get its electricity from nuclear power (on July 17, 1955).  This fact is proudly announced on Recreation Hall on Main Street, on a marquee style sign.  Number Hill is the result of a tradition of Butte County High School painting the year of each graduation class on the hill, since 1920.  It's quite unique and striking, and this is the first time I've stopped to get a photo of it.  I love all of these small towns in Idaho and Montana - they're so proud of their accomplishments and traditions.

Mailboxes in the Snow - Comment to Win an 8x10!

It's becoming that time again!  Time for snow, and winter, and warm gatherings with friends.  This photo was taken in the Emmett Valley in last year's first snowstorm.  We were driving around, and were lucky enough to be caught in the snowstorm, with a camera! 

Comment on this post to win this photo (8x10, glossy, matted).  Winner will be notified after  December 1st.  Photo will be signed by the artist and matted in a white mat that will fit an 11x14 frame.

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Jump Creek and Jump Creek Falls

Jump Creek Falls is an amazing place just outside of Marsing, Idaho. This spring, we were driving around and happened upon the signs for the falls, and decided to follow them. We were pleasantly surprised to find a nice trail that led along Jump Creek up to the falls, which is really like something out of a postcard. The only thing we really had to watch out for was poison ivy all along the trail (which is sort of a problem if you have dogs) but we came away unscathed.

We were lucky enough to happen along this gem near sunset and I was able to capture the red sky against the walls of the canyon. Spectacular!

Illustration Friday: Flying

My dog, Milo, has a one-track mind. He loves to play fetch. He would fetch all day long if he could. I drew this picture while sitting on the banks of the South Fork of the Boise River, and while I was drawing the landscape, Milo kept dragging all manner of riverside debris over to me to throw, so he could retrieve it. An osprey flew overhead just as Milo was dragging a large stick (which some people may have considered a log) to my feet. Milo looked intently at the bird, and I could almost read his mind.

This drawing was done in my Moleskine with colored pencil and India ink. Text was added in Photoshop.

Warren Creek Dredge

Warren, Idaho is a small town located 50 miles outside of the popular vacation destination of McCall. Gold was discovered there in 1862, causing the settlement's population to expand to nearly 2000 people shortly thereafter. After a decline in mining initially, dredge operations were set up in the 1930s, which included this, the Warren Creek Dredge. Dredging was done all around Idaho, leaving large piles of rock around creeks and often negative environmental impacts. You can see some of these dredge piles in one of the sketches from my Moleskine that I posted a while back, here. Warren's current population is between 12 and 16 full-time residents. Many of the historic homes in the town are now used as vacation homes and cabins.

I did this drawing a few years ago on commission for a friend, who has a cabin in Warren (she and her husband own the dredge foreman's former home, I think). She had some old photographs of the dredging operation for me to work from. It was a lot of fun, and I thought I would share it with you here. I am thinking of making an edition of prints of this drawing for sale and I will post more information here when I do. Enjoy!

"Tractor Pull" Poster

These are the very first posters I have hand printed using the screen printing process. I did the illustration by hand based on a tractor that we borrowed for our garden this spring. I laid out the poster with Adobe Illustrator, and also did the color separations with AI. I made a screen for each color, and printed the color poster twice, lining the images up from each screen... a two-color image. Also, the tractor pull event is entirely fake, I made it up and made it on Greg's birthday. He is 45 years old this year, so it is the "45th Annual."

Where I used to work, we used the screen printing process also -- except we used it to print solder paste onto printed circuit boards. I found it interesting that the types of problems we had with the screen printing process at the factory also translated to this process. Registration, snapoff, etc have to be just right to get a good print. It's a challenge, but overall, the process really intrigues me and I hope to have lots of new artwork to share with you.

Back roads to Idaho City

Back roads... gotta love them. I love going for drives, especially ones that include back roads. I love it even more when the route winds through territory previously untraveled by yours truly... and there are lots of those here in Idaho, mostly because I haven't lived here that long. So, a few days ago, my husband and I decided to go fishing and decided to head over the foothills into the Emmett valley and through Black Canyon into the Montour WMA. When we got to Montour, we were greeted with stinky, nearly empty ponds and an overflowing Payette River... not especially friendly to the angler. So we continued on to Horseshoe Bend and decided to take a drive from there to Idaho City along Harris Creek Road. It was a gorgeous drive; the wildflowers were out and in full bloom. When we got closer to Idaho City, we saw all of the dredge tailings from the mining operation along Granite Creek that was active as early as 140 years ago. We pulled off the road and Greg decided to try fishing the creek. I sat on one of the big dredge tailing mounds and sketched him fishing while Milo sat patiently at my side. Milo is my German Shepherd dog (and my running partner/bestest buddy/bodyguard). It was such a gorgeous day and the sun was going lower in the sky, producing excellent light that flooded the drainage in brilliant colors. The dredging tailings made me want to learn more about the mining history in Idaho, so I think I will be heading over to the Idaho Historical Society this week to check it out.

P.S. Greg didn't catch anything... better luck next time!