yesterday was an unusual day. in the morning, i made the drawing in colored pencil & crayon you see below, fully intending to cut it to pieces and use it in a new collage. but the more i looked at it, the more i remembered mikela saying, a few days ago, "next time you do one of those, don't cut it up; save it for me."
the more i looked at it, the tougher it was to take a scissors to it. so i left it.
that afternoon, i thought it would be a good day to go out & paint plein air. i felt more like going to north crestone creek than to the active arroyo we've been visiting over the past few days. (see my 6/3/14 blog).
so i drove up to n. crestone creek only to find every single campsite occupied. tents everywhere. our formerly little known creek with it's beautiful campsites has been discovered, it seems. so i went to a site just opposite the parking lot, but well hidden in the trees, hoping i could remain undetected. within 5 minutes of setting up my easel and squeezing colors onto my palette, no more than 30 feet to my right i was confronted with a scraggly 20 something who whipped out his equipment and proceeded to pee. it went downhill from there, & this morning i ended up scraping off the very mediocre painting i did.
in a few days, our high desert cactus will bloom. happens every june. lasts maybe a week or 10 days. i see them with their deep purple buds quivering in the strong spring winds as i walk the 500 feet from our house to my studio.
