A gallery of paintings

I think I'm a decent photographer. (I look better than I am, because I throw away 90% of my shots and only save the really good ones.) But painting or drawing takes a lot more time and patience, and I haven't often had that kind of patience.

Recently, however, I've been using some of my better photos as the basis for images that have much of the appeal of watercolor paintings. I can't claim to be a painter by any stretch of the imagination, but I like these images... and I've always believed that in art, it doesn't matter how you made the image—all that matters is the result.

I've accumulated enough of these digital paintings that I thought it would be fun to put them on display, so here's my gallery of would-be watercolors. I hope you enjoy it!

Last summer I had a great time riding the C&T narrow-gauge railroad from Chama, NM to Antonito, CO. You can read all about it in my two-part series "Ticket to Ride."

This caboose doesn't belong to the C&T, but it's so bright and cheerful looking that I couldn't resist including it here.

My cat Marie died in 2006, but I still miss her.

From the domestic to the exotic...

The giraffe is a real live one, but the rhino is a bronze statue that I found on a street corner in Wyoming. What was he doing there? Who knows? Trying to escape poachers, perhaps.

Watson Lake, near Prescott, Arizona, is a great place to kayak because it has such an interesting shoreline.

This wandering stream in Villanueva, New Mexico looked so cool and refreshing....

...quite a contrast to the majestic Colorado National Monument.

Late spring in the Chihuahuan desert brings a profusion of cactus flowers.

I worked here for sixteen years. The grounds were always lovely, but fall was the best.

This scaly fellow didn't belong to me, but I took care of him for awhile back in the Seventies. He was the only reptile I ever met who had what could be called a personality.

These tiny chipmunks were scampering all over the place when I stayed up on Colorado's Grand Mesa.

On the other hand, winter comes early at 10,000 feet on the Mesa, as I and my friends discovered!

If you want to see odd rocks, the Jumbo Rocks campground at Joshua Tree National Monument in southern California is the place to go.

This female moose (or moosess, if you prefer) was munching away on willows at Deer Lakes, Colorado.

Looking down on the world from 14,000 feet, this mountain goat is right at home.

And yes, once in awhile I tackle the toughest subject of all: people.

Hope you enjoyed the tour! Thanks for coming, and be sure to pick up a copy of the catalog on your way out.

About the paintings

A few people have asked for details about how I created these images. As mentioned above, I started with my own photos, and then applied some processing with an iPad/iPhone app called Waterlogue. In most cases I created several versions of a photo, using various settings in the Waterlogue app to emphasize detail or color. Then I stacked the multiple images in Photoshop CS6 and combined selected portions to bring out the effects I wanted. Hand rework followed: cleaning up processing artifacts and adjusting local color and contrast. (I use a Wacom graphics tablet with pressure-sensitive stylus for this kind of work; it gives me much better control than a mouse.)