Slowly getting back

So it's taken me much longer to get back into painting regularly than I had hoped it would! Before baby G was born, I had really ambitious/unrealistic goals of continuing to at least draw every day and being back to painting regularly within a month or two. So here we are nine months later... But in that time, apart from getting use to caring for four little kiddos, my husband got a job in North Dakota(!) and we moved our family far from grandparents and friends and everything familiar. Enough with excuses though, I did start painting again a month or two ago. I just kept putting off posting until I felt like I was ready to do it regularly again. That probably won't happen until after the holidays, but it is way past time to jump back in. So here are two of the three paintings I've done recently of my new surroundings (Sorry for the bad photos. They were already framed before I thought to photograph them and I'm being too lazy to take them apart just for a photo):

"Badlands Buffalo"

"In the Shadows of Thee"

Never painted a buffalo before so that was a first, but they're a much-requested subject around these parts :) I painted these for a local show (Badlands Art Association's Annual Show), and won 1st place for the second of the two! Kinda funny since I had procrastinated (big surprise there!) and had only finished painting it about two hours before I had to drop off the painting. Oh boy. That was cutting it close! I think I still prefer the first. The color makes it much more exciting. And I never really got the trees in the front of the second painting to look how I wanted them to. The Badlands are a mere half hour from our house though, so I imagine there will be lots more of these interesting hills to come!