Bald Eagle – Stephanie Richey Art

Wow, this has been such a great visit with family this last 10 days. We have had a great time visiting family and enjoying the visits, the drives, and all the fun we have had. We are sad to be going home but excited to see home, family, and the dog.

One of the places I really wanted to take my daughter was to Red Cliffs Recreation Area. It’s kind of a mini Zion National Park only a lot less people. It’s a beautiful area with red rocks and arches and lots of hiking trails to explore. She loves photography and loves the color contrasts of the desert. This was one of my favorite places growing up and is only 30 minutes south of Cedar City.

One of my daughters favorite things is to drive up Cedar Canyon. There has been so much snow up the canyon and she hadn’t had her own car so she hadn’t gone up the canyon yet since she had returned to Cedar. A couple days after I arrived we found her a nice little SUV that had low miles and was the right price, so Tuesday we decided to go up the canyon. Cedar has had a lot more snow than they’ve had in years and there is a lot more snow up the mountain than normal, several feet more standing snow than we have at our house in Alaska. We didn’t go all the way to the top because of time constraints, but we enjoyed the drive and scenery we got to see.

This has been a fun vacation and opportunity to spend time with my family. I miss them when we’re apart and there’s never enough time when I’m here, but I know I’ll be back. I have also had some time to paint in between things, so here are some of the quick paintings I did, and one that took a little bit longer.

We have been super busy this week, but I was finally able to finish a painting. I am so grateful for the time, even with our very hectic week we’ve had. I have been painting an Eagle. The inspiration for this painting came from a picture one of my sons took. Every spring as our little swampy pond area starts to thaw, we have eagles come and eat stuff out of the thawing ice. I’m not sure if it’s small fish from the stream, or just small animals that didn’t survive through the winter, but they come and spend several days eating. This offers us a great opportunity to watch these magnificent birds, but also affords us many opportunities for pictures. This picture has been sitting on my computer as something that inspired me for months now, and I finally got around to painting it. He actually took several cool pictures, so this might not be the only one, but this one was my favorite one.

I always want to get pictures of the eagles flying, but I usually end up getting them flying away. I don’t really have any desire or inspiration to painting the back side of an eagle. But with a lot of patience on the part of my son, and a little instruction from me as to what I was looking for, the above picture was the picture he took. He did a great job! I loved it as soon as I saw it, but I didn’t like the background. That is the beauty of being an artist however, I can change that. So, last week I set out enlarging and making a simple sketch of what I wanted, painting the sketch to get the colors right, and then drawing the finished sketch on my watercolor paper. This week I spent painting.

I loved the subject right from the beginning, and I really like the background change. Eagles are one of the most impressive birds, and I love seeing them all the time here in Alaska. They are one of my favorite birds. I have had the opportunity to have one fly over my car as I was driving down my driveway, and they are impressively large birds as well. I had a lot of fun painting this picture, and I am glad that I finally had time to paint the beautiful picture that my son was able to capture so long ago!