My group today was ready to paint. I had some die-hard folks that seem to revel in the adverse conditions and produced some awesome work. It's not tough to be inspired to paint here!

We set out to paint along the Merced river this morning at 9:00. It was so cold my paint formed ice crystals on the palette! This made painting rather difficult, but eventually the sun came out and warmed us up a bit.

It was so cold last night the waterfall froze! Painting today was tough!

My workshop painted the chapel at Yosemite today. We still had problems with getting the paint to dry and froze our tails off until almost 1:00. Some of the high rock formations keep the valley in shadow for most of the day. This is a tough group of plein air painters. The worse the conditions,…

Today's workshop was a challenge. My paper buckled from the humidity before I even started painting on it. The cold made weilding a paintbrush more difficult and my fingers kept wanting to retract into my fingerless gloves. I chose a close-up view of Yosemite Falls, as did most of my group. It was all wet-in-wet…

The falls at Yosemite don't run unless it rains. My painters were treated with spectacular views in a 52 degree, damp studio. We had a tough time getting the paint to dry. A few sprinkles added that "plein air" authenticity. We toughed it out as long as we could without a Starbucks.