During spring break of 2019, when the rest of my family was away in California, I decided to travel to New Mexico, stay with my parents, and do artwork in various places. I went skiing at Taos Ski Valley on March 19, and brought with me an easel, a 24″X18″ pad of toned paper, and pencils and chalk. 

Starting a drawing on toned paper was a relatively new thing for me, but I was interested because the darker tonal value of the paper made the white chalk really show up. However, on this day I used a grey-toned paper. 

2019 marks the year that I transitioned away from using white paper to the toned paper. I also was consistently working larger. This meant that I needed to carry more gear around with me, in this case needing a huge backpack to store the tripod and the pad of paper (all of which made skiing a little challenging).

Back to this particular drawing. After skiing a few runs and doing two other drawings, I ended up back at the base at the end of the day, where I could not resist this view of the famous Al’s Run!