John Day Fossil Beds National Monmument and Update on New Wildlife Colored Pencil Artwork

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

This past week, we had the privilege of visiting the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Eastern Oregon.  

My Family 

The park has three units: the Painted Hills Unit, The Blue Basin Unit, and the Clarno Unit. There is also the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center that has an amazing fossil gallery exhibit and a gift store. In addition, there is the Cant Ranch House which is presently closed due to Covid. It use to be the main visitor center until the Paleontology Center was built in 2003. 

The National Park was discovered by Captain John M. Drake, who had collected items and sent them to Congregationalist minister and self-trained scientist Thomas Condon. He had an avid interest in geology and paleontology, and he was the first to proclaim the importance of the fossil beds and conducted many expeditions in the area. The National Park Service states that "Thomas Condon believed that religion and modern science went hand in hand - that science was a means to understand the spectacular nature of God’s creation and that science and religion were not in conflict with one another."

And this area, I must say, is one of God's fantastic creations. The rolling painted hills, the variety of wildlife, and the fossil beds telling a tale of a time long ago. 

Painted Hills Unit	Painted Hills Unit
Painted Hills Unit	Painted Hills Unit
Painted Hills Unit	Blue Basin Unit
Old Logging Road	Blue Basin Unit
Painted Hills Unit	Old Logging Road
Painted Hills Unit	Fleabane
Oregon Sunshine	Purple Prairie Clover

Work-In-Progress Update

I am continuing on layering the Terracotta Prismacolor Verithin on the new work-in-progress piece. I didn't get much time to work on it this past week as we were on a mini-vacation. I hope to get more time this week to work on it and to begin the next step of adding other layers of colors. 

Keep on Creating!

Have a blessed week!

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