Transamerica 2012 West to East

#1 Alameda, California- I painted this one as a test, as Casey drove my car around the block over and over to get the hang of it before the trip.

#2 Salt Lake City, Utah

#3 Salt Lake City, Utah- I always want to go over things in ink and on this one I indulged myself. Casey thought it looked unfinished, so I didn't do it on the rest.

#4 Three days in Yellowstone, WY. Yellowstone was hard to paint. The one that turned out the best was at Painter's Point, where you can see and paint the falls. I used water from the Grand Prismatic spring for these three.

 #5 Yellowstone, WY

 #6 Yellowtone, WY

 #7 Yellowstone, WY
Then my road trip ended but I had half the postcards left!

 #8 Washington, DC

 Here is a blurry photo of the Washington Monument stamp visiting the Washington Monument. I took some even blurrier photos of a penny visiting the Lincoln Memorial.

 #9 Mount Rainier, MD- this is the view from my window, but it is also what my apartment building looks like. We live in one of three nearly identical developments. When we were brand new here, I spent half an hour driving around them, unable to find our cross streets.

#11 MD- This is the flag of Maryland. It's different from the others, since I had to get it in the mail right away for a friend who is traveling. (I addressed and labeled all the postcards before I started, and he was number 11 and I decided I didn't want to do them out of order.) 

I am a good painter! A good oil painter. I worked in watercolors this trip because they are portable, they don't smell, the brushes can be cleaned in water, and the paintings dry right away. I missed my oil paints soooo many times while I was working on these. I think I am a little better at watercolors than these postcards show, because I was working outside in the sun and everything, and tried to get everything in a mailbox in the state where it was painted. One thing I didn't realize is that watercolor paper has to be stretched wet on a board, or it will curl. I think I had a pad of watercolor paper once that was already treated, so I thought only very lightweight paper curls up when it dries.