While studying Neil Welliver, an American landscape artist, I began to make more sketches on location and not rely solely on photographs for making finished paintings in my studio. I found that I get a better sense of the forms and color while spending time sketching and painting in the environment. While all my paintings were of places I had spent consider time, either around my home or places I had hiked and visited, I find that hiking is not the same thought process as spending time actually working out the colors or forms on paper. From this point on, I have made more of an effort to do some of the work on location.