Eltuck Cove Meadows - Horsetooth Reservoir, CO

This painting marks my fifth work from the shores of Horsetooth Reservoir. Whenever I’m able to go boating or paddleboarding, I won’t leave the house without my pochade box. Unlike typical paddle board paintings I’ve done previously, I was grateful to have the shade of being on the boat for the duration of this piece.

Late summer is one of the best times to go painting in Colorado. The colors shift with what seems to be warmer light, we get beautiful and dramatic thunderheads all across the front range, and, as in the case of this year, late-summer droughts tend to push leaf change earlier, so you can paint fall colors without freezing. The drought circumstances are, of course, very unfortunate for all of Colorado.

Though I naturally gravitate towards the shoreline and water at Horsetooth, I was drawn to this beautiful meadow glowing in the afternoon sun. The dark ridge of shadowed pines made for perfect value contrast, and the most perfect sliver of blue sky came through the clouds to the right of my vantage point. It was windy with the passing storm, so I had to paint these clouds particularly fast.

I painted this in a couple of hours, with my husband napping beside me, and it was the perfect way to spend an afternoon. This painting was a particularly good candidate for a very small studio session to add just a few brushstrokes to the foliage and foreground reeds to really make them pop and glow. However, I limit myself to around 20 brushstrokes for paintings that already feel “done”. I also dropped it on the way out, with relatively good luck on the outcome, but the dashes in the clouds and foreground couldn’t stay.

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