Pennsylvanica Elk in Benezette, PA

If you ever get the opportunity to go to Benezette, PA in the fall, you will see beautiful scenes of elk roaming the country side. Some even come into the small village of Benezette. We were told the best time to come in towards evening or early morning.


We tried counting the tines on this big bull elk and we believe there are 17 points. You can't really see them all in the above photo but are a bit easier to see in the lower one. He is beautiful. These photos were taken in the evening when the light was fading so the photos aren't that bright.

Below is a smaller bull, and he was along the road near a creek just standing there looking at us. The light was much better for this photo.


Here is a close up of old #36, I believe that is the number on his collar. He is one that has been tagged. He was probably about 25 feet or so from me when I took this photo.

Here are some elk standing in a field, too far away to get good close up photos.

We took our family down to see these magnificant creatures and our grandson had a ball. He must of taken a hundred photos of the elk on his papa's camera. Then we had a nice picnic lunch, of course it was extremely cold eating at the picnic table but was over all a very nice day.

Jumping Jack Flash's Portrait

I am now done with Jumping Jack Flash. It is hard to get a good photo of the painting as he is not this orange but all my photos want to show him like that. He is a beautiful old horse.

Jumping Jack Flash

Here is an updated photo of Jumping Jack Flash. He is almost done now. I have to let him dry and then go over him in places to bring out more highlights and shadows and finish up some my nitpicking that I always do before being done.

Jumping Jack Flash, Thoroughbred

I've been working on Jumping Jack Flash for a couple weeks now and have enough done to put him on here so you can see him. He is owned by Dr. Blayne Bergenstock and is 25 years old. He is quite a handsome old man. I've got a lot to do on him yet so will update when I have more done.

Timber Rattle Snake

I finally was able to finish my rattle snake commission. This is a small painting, a 5 x 7 in size. I have to say this was a different painting for me to do and was fun. It did get a little tedious towards the end, but it was still fun to do. Now I will be starting on my horse portrait commission as soon as my canvas comes in for it. The horse will be done on an 18 x 24 so will be much different than this one for me to do. I love horses though so this will be fun to do to.

Snake update

Here is an update of the timber rattler. I think he is coming along quite good. The scales are starting to get tedious, they are getting smaller and more it's work to do them. The eye was fun, I never painted speckles in an eye before, I didn't know the snakes had speckles in their eyes until I started painting this one. They have tiny speckles on the scales on their face too. Very interesting.

Monarch Caterpillars

Nothing new to add to my paintings so I thought I would show you this. My neighbor and her nephew went looking to see if they could find Monarch caterpillars and they found this nice one here shown above that I beleive is full size (full grown). Look at the tiny baby caterpillars they also found. I never have seen any this small before. The littlest one is smaller than my little finger's fingernail is wide. I laid my hand in the photo so as to show you the perspective as to how small the little one is.

One more thing. I told her that they are endangered due to their habit loss so they took them back to the milkweeds where they found them.