Victor Celebrates The Arts -- # 2

For another piece I painted early in the morning at the Vindicator Mine.  My first step was to sketch in the old mine and brush in the darks.  Then I painted in the lights.  I found the challenge with the lights was to make them realistic without being too pastelley...is that a word? 

Then next sep was to paint in the darks.  When painting plein air it's always a good plan to block in the lights and darks first, then not to change them.  It's so tempting to chase the light, but don't!

This gives you an idea of my progress up to this point; but the photo is a little too light.

After this I added the grasses and piles of ore and dirt in the foreground, then last put in the sky.

I had planned on posting pretty regularly during the 10 day event, but it took at least 6 minutes to upload each photo, there wasn't service where we stayed, and sometimes there wasn't much service anywhere!  So, I'm home now and will start posting my steps and finished pieces.

This is the Vindicator Gold Mine, one of many historic mines in the Cripple Creek - Victor area. 

Gold was discovered in the area in 1890 and brought thousands of people to the Pikes Peak region.  Over 500 gold mines sprang up across the mountains.  The Cripple Creek and Victor area was linked to Colorado Springs by two stage roads and three railroads all built to carry lumber, food, coal, ore, people and supplies.  

In its' hey day in the 1890's Victor was known as the City Of Mines because the largest and richest gold mines were located just above the city.  Nearly $434,000,000 in gold (in 1890'a value) was produced.

Here are some pictures of the mines:

I had a comment in my last post about all the white (snow) that you can see when you Google map Victor.  That's not snow, it's all the ore tailings from the mine.  CC&VM ie:  Cripple Creek & Victor Mine is still a working gold mine!