An illustrated guide and travelogue detailing watercolour painting and drawing techniques specific to stunning natural environments found along the North American Rocky Mountain Range from New Mexico to Alaska.

Over the past 15 years, and since the publication of her first book, A Rocky Mountain Sketchbook, well-known art instructor Donna Jo Massie has been developing her creative experiences in outdoor landscapes by travelling and painting in famously stunning locations in American mountain parks, from a monastery in the Chama Wilderness in northern New Mexico to the Alaska Marine Ferry on the Inside Passage.

Throughout this fun and practical book, the reader is presented with illustrated pages from Donna Jo’s own sketchbooks, featuring step-by-step instructions; notes on watercolour palette selection and important techniques; pages devoted to clouds, rocks, trees, water and colour schemes; a map with locations where the sketches were painted; location information that includes websites should you feel inspired to visit and paint these same landscapes; a supplies and tools page; and separate sketching pages, because, let’s face it, you can’t have too many sketchbooks.

Donna Jo Massie was born in 1948, in the Great Smoky Mountains in Cherokee, North Carolina. She received a degree in Education from Auburn University and taught in Alabama and Florida before moving to Alberta in 1976 as Environmental Educator for Kananaskis Country. She makes frequent hiking trips into the mountains to collect material for her artwork, painting and sketching on location. In addition to painting, she also teaches popular adult watercolour classes, along with corporate and summer backcountry workshops in remote areas. She has been Artist in Residence at The Banff Centre's Leighton Artists' Colony and at the Columbia Icefields, and was International Peace Park Artist in Residence for Glacier National Park in the United States. Her work has been featured internationally in galleries and exhibitions in Canada and the United States, and her art can be found in private collections around the world. Donna Jo is a member of the Alberta Society of Artists, the Society of Canadian Artists and the Elmore County (Alabama) Art Guild and is an Honorary Member of the Canmore Art Guild. In 1988 she made art her full-time profession and currently operates a home studio in the Canadian Rocky Mountains in Canmore, Alberta.

Donna Jo Massie's profile page