This painting represents a specific time and place in American history. Early Latter-day Saints built this temple in Nauvoo Illinois. Between December 1845 and February 1846 thousands of faithful [...]

I am using an oversize sheet of Arches 140 lb. cold pressed watercolor paper for this painting. I first soaked it in the bath tub, then stapled it to my backing board. When dry I carefully worked [...]

While you can’t draw in every detail at the start, I at least need to get the proportions fairly accurate. As I begin painting, I will lift the lines a little with a kneaded eraser so they [...]

I wanted this painting to have a warm, majestic feel, even though it was a winter scene. So I used lots of yellows and pinks in the dramatic sky, echoing those hues in the shadows of the temple [...]

Proud owners Grant and Joyce Lee with the finished framed painting.

I continue to build up the values now and go to work on all the foliage. I work a little bit tightly on a few of the foreground shrubs to identify detail more clearly. After a couple of weeks on [...]

The painting underway on my drawing table. Notice how I pin my sketches and reference photos to the table as I need to refer to them for structure.

Even though it’s a winter scene I want to allow a few autumn colors to show through to help warm the painting up. Now I do a little more careful sketch of the buggy and start to paint it [...]

The buggy is finished and looks pretty good so I can move forward with the more tedious work of establishing the windows and surface details on the temple. This part takes a long time, but I [...]