This is the wild rose fruit, which I love because it reminds me of when my mother and I would go out and gather them. She would make a delicious jam out of them and dry some of the hips for tea. They are packed with vitamin C, and this along with chamomile, was one of her standard cure-alls for whatever ailed us. This particular drawing, by the way, was not done in a Moly but I hope Leo will publish it anyhow. It is a greeting card done for a friend of mine as a thank you for selling ten of my paintings recently. I don’t know how she does that, but it’s wonderful!!!

This time of year everything that bloomed earlier is bearing seeds or fruit. This is mountain ash with it’s beautiful orange-red fruit.

Done with markers as an experiment. Since the colors of my markers are very garish I was trying to get skin tones. Anyhow, that’s me—a used-to-be blonde who is now mostly gray and loving it, but I left out some of my wrinkles which is artistic license, right?

This is one of the prettiest lakes around here, but it’s hard to get to as the road is VERY steep and rocky with scary drop-offs. A 4-wheel drive is definitely mandatory. The day I painted this it was another perfect day, with a nice breeze, stunning colors, and happy fishermen who were catching good-sized trout. And since this lake is at about 7,000 feet all sorts of flowers were still blooming up there even if everything down here has dried up.

We seem to have lots of these little churches in our county. This one is in old mining town named Johnsville. It is used by the historical society these days and is only open for special functions. I had a lot of trouble with perspective on this one as I was sitting below it looking up, so one of these days I’ll try it again.

I loved this little outhouse with its peeling paint. Found in a state park somewhere.

This is a side dirt road over Beckwourth Pass, which is the road going to Reno, Nevada. Even though the elevation is higher than where I live, it is the beginning of the Great Basin Desert and is very dry and rocky, with sagebrush and antelope bush being the primary plant life. From the top of the pass you can see layers and layers of mountains, and cars on the distant highway look like little wind-up toys. I’m not particularly fond of the desert, but I do like the immense view from up there where mankind looks more like an ant and you get your perspective back on where we really fit into nature’s picture.

I was on a narrow rocky dirt road here. Far down below is a lovely river with some of the prettiest campgrounds I’ve ever seen, never very crowded either and with good access to the river. This canyon is about 1,500 feet lower in elevation than where I live, so by April when we still have snow, I like to go there and get some sun and see what’s blooming.

Used indigo Verithin pencil for the drawing and then filled in with watercolor.

Very quick sketch with markers. I just loved this old rotting stump with all sorts of new growth on it. Life will “live” no matter how difficult, it seems.