Big Sky & Flathead Lake

After an exhilarating month in California painting and sketching, we spent
the first week of August in Montana for a mini family reunion. We rented a
charming old lake house on Flathead Lake, an incredible glacier-fed lake in the
northwestern part of the state. These blog posts are pages from my sketchbook. 

I love taking a "vacation" from creating finished paintings and enjoy filling pages with sketches, studies and small vignettes. It enables me to explore and observe. To spend time with family and still make time for art! (I have a wonderful family that understands my need to draw and paint where ever we are!)

Our house was part of a 200 acre ranch, The Winkley Ranch. The summer house was built by family members in the 1950s and it was the perfect lake house with a charming screened-in porch for morning coffee or sleepovers (the young cousins bunked out there -- it was a like camping in the trees with the sound of the water lapping onto the shore!).  Just a short walk down the path lined with pine trees and we were down at the water's edge.

The shoreline was lined with rocks to secure the beach area and boat ramp. The lake is huge (the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi!) and the weather can change from calm to stormy with whitewater waves pounding the shoreline! I loved how the colors changed in the water depending on the water's depth or the sunlight touching its surface. I loved focusing on all the subtle colors and range of hues in the rocky ledge.

From the front of our vacation spot we looked out to grassy fields, cherry orchards and further up to the foothills thick with evergreens. The clouds were incredible... it was big sky country (and it is!). I loved watching them move across the expanse of blue. I loved the colors and textures of the pine bark and the range of colors in the grasses of the old ranch land.