The Inspiration

This painting is also inspired by my recent trip back to Missoula, but this is not the first time I’ve painted this specific winter scene.
It captures my heart every time!
This view is looking West from the Higgins Street Bridge, a bridge that I’ve crossed a hundred thousand times, by foot, car, bike, and that one time in college I dated a guy with a motorcycle for three whole days!
The view never gets old.

On the North side of the bridge is the historic and famous Wilma Theater. Under and to the side of the bridge is the carousel, and the Caras Park Pavilion - a permanent tent and outdoor amphitheater that hosts neighborhood concerts in the summer, along with farmer’s markets, weddings, craft markets, festivals, and more - it’s the heart of this town, IMHO.

On the South side of the bridge is the Hip Strip, a continuation of downtown, with bakeries, restaurants, The Roxy theater, Joseph’s Coat yarn shop, Noteworthy Press (my fav!), and a host of quirky, delightful shops.
Of the bakeries, Bernice’s Bakery is the place I went to warm up immediately after spending 20 min sketching on the bridge in 20-degree weather.

The fastest I’ve ever sketched anything!!

Warming up in a sunbeam with a Tipu’s Chai at Bernice’s Bakery.

Bernice’s Bakery is another main character of my childhood. We would go there as a family for herb cream cheese rolls and pecan sticky buns on our way up to Flathead Lake on the weekends.
We would walk there during our lunch break, since the high school was only 4 blocks away. My first and ONLY solo art show was there after I graduated from College.
Bernice’s, like the bridges, The M, the ochre colored hills, and the Indigo and Indithrine Rocky Mountains are staples of Missoula.
Staples the places that my heart will always recognize as HOME.

“It’s that feeling of home, familiarity, calm, comfort that I wanted to capture in this series of paintings that were inspired by these views of Missoula, Montana. ”

— Jill

Field Notes

As noted above, I didn’t spend a lot of time in the field due to the frigid nose-hair freezing cold.

I did take a bunch of photos, and I spent my time inside the bakery drawing, and sipping tea in that glorious sunbeam!

I used dry media for this sketch. I didn’t want to start flinging paint about with so many laptops and delicacies within splatter range.

In The Studio

Thumbnails and Value studies
Taking the field work into the studio for larger paintings

Transferring the composition and value study onto watercolor paper. My favorite paper is Arches, 400lb hot or cold press, depending on the texture I’m after. Im using cold press (lots of paper texture) for this painting.

From blocking in to adding the first details. 20 minutes of painting, shown in 20 seconds.

Blocking in thin layers of color in large swaths.

For this painting, I’m using Iron Oxide Red and Phalo Turquoise, mixed with white gouache, to convey glacial, icy colors and bare winter branches.
Yellow/Green Ochre for the hills and surrounding trees. The sky and distant mountains are a mix of Phalo Turquoise and Indigo.

In the video:
The smaller palette to my left is filled with water-based gouache paints. I used a lot of white in this painting to depict the icy cold.
In front of me are the value study, in case I need it for reference, and the rough painted sketch I did once home from my morning in the field.

The parts I love about this “rough” are the lamp posts and the shadows, the color of the water, and the graphite of the hills peeking through the paint. These raw qualities are the parts I want to preserve in the final studio painting.

The Almost - Final Art

The painting shown above is the one I was working on in the video.
I spent about 6-8 hours on the painting over several days, and I’m not happy with it at all. It’s lucky it didn’t end up wadded up on the bottom of the trash can!

I’m showing it to you, though, because it’s a great example of what happens when one strays from the plan.
Remember all those thumbnails and value studies - yeah, I ignored all that shit mid-painting.

You can see from the value study (above, left) that I intended to omit the walking path and light posts, and place the trees from the walking path in the foreground. Even though the light posts and shadows were my favorite part of the rough painted sketch (above, right).
If I recall correctly, I determined that it was a stronger composition without the path.
But then, mid-painting, the trees weren’t doing what I wanted, so apparently, I decided I desperately missed the lamp posts.
Therefore, I flipped a bitch at the rifle range* and changed the direction of this painting 180 degrees.

What I ended up with was a heavily overworked painting in an entirely different color palette??! than the one I started with.
Honestly, what am I even doing with my life?!?

Sadly, I know from experience that this is what happens when I get tired. But with the stubborn tenacity of a 400-pound ox, with a feed bucket in sight, I keep pushing on.

BUT, do not despair, not all is lost!

The other reason I am showing the overworked monstrosity of a painting is that it conveys another important lesson.

And that is:
It is VERY tempting to call the 6-8 hours I spent on the first painting a waste, but even though I was in an exhausted fugue while painting, I was learning.

I was learning the hard way, which is and has always been my favorite way to learn. If you aren’t being kicked in the teeth by a lesson, how will you ever remember it?!

At some point, I was so disgusted with the “Overworked Monstrocity” that I started over.

And here is where the magic happened!
I went back to my original plan, I adjusted the color palette, and painted this in less than an hour!

The Actual Final Art

2nd attempt and a painting that I LOVE!!!

All that time was adding up.
I was learning what didn’t work, and what I didn’t want. So when I started over, I was quite clear on what I wanted from this painting. And BANG, POP, Cheesy POOF, there it was!

All those sketches, studies, roughs, and a failed painting were leading up to this painting, which I am very proud of and excited about.

The takeaway?
Take breaks, trust the plan, and after a break - keep going!

“The most successful people are’t necessarily the best at their craft, they are the ones who never gave up. ”

— I heard this somewhere

This painting will be available on March 1, 2026, at noon PST in the “Cruise Gift Shop,” i.e., my Etsy shop.

I’ll see you next week for our final leg of the Sun DRENCHED Cruise!

p.s. Remember the words bacon buns for a special surprise next week!

*Flipping a bitch at the Rifle Range was a term that my friend Ella coined while living in Anchorage, Alaska. The Turnagain Highway is the road that takes you South out of Anchorage, leading to the Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood and the Kenai Peninsula.
The problem is that it is one of the most dangerous highways in all of the US. It’s curvy and treacherous. There were and probably still are a lot of accidents on that road, and if you got stuck on the highway behind an accident, you could be there for a VERY long time! There are very few turnouts, turnouts or ways out, unless you hadn’t passed the rifle range yet - then you could flip a bitch in the parking lot and gtfo of that situation.

SUN DRENCHED Part 11