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A crowd gathered around Al Krnc as he pointed to the watercolor paintings hanging on the walls of the Wild Horse Gallery and told the story of how each came to be.

Krnc has lived through The Depression, through two World Wars, through the changing times of the 1960s and '70s, and he paints with the knowledge of those years. His hands are steady as he creates entire landscapes out of a few brushstrokes.

He likes painting winter scenes. The snow covers the ground, the trees, the old barns and offers a challenge to the artist who must leave much of his canvas blank.

He puts very little water in his pigments so the colors don't run into the snow. Watercolor is a very unforgiving medium. And that's why Krnc likes it.

He's never been one for the easy road.

Krnc was the son of a widow, and when his three older brothers were drafted into World War II, he found himself as the sole breadwinner for his family. He was only 16 when he dropped out of school and took a job as a lithographer in Cleveland. The company made 24-sheet billboard posters for Warner Brothers. He worked as a printer until he was in his 50s.

He painted throughout his life, but the courage to quit his job and focus on a full-time career as a watercolorist came suddenly and unexpectedly.

It was 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, and he decided to stop by the printing company where he worked to make sure everything was in order for the next day. He already had cut his hours to part time.

When he arrived at the office, the owner was there.

"He asked me to come back full time, and I looked at him and said, 'I'm quitting,'" Krnc said. "I went home and told my wife to sit down. It was the most freeing feeling."

Krnc has been painting the Yampa Valley for 30 years and, during the years, he has become just as established in the local art scene as he is in his hometown of Euclid, Ohio. He formed friendships with local artists Curtis Zabel and Jean Perry, who showed him their favorite pockets of Routt County, many of which have appeared in his paintings -- remote corners of ranches or tucked away hillsides on Rabbit Ears Pass or Buffalo Pass.

His compositions, he said, are rarely the way they appear when he first sees them.

The painting "Pickup Sticks" is a simple painting of rotting logs on the side of a hill. Beyond the trees is the distant view familiar to anyone who has been on Buffalo Pass. The composition looks natural, but is a creation by the artist. In reality, there was only one log on the hill. The other logs Krnc added to the painting came from a pasture at the bottom of the hill.

"With watercolor, you have to plan your painting," he sad. "You can't make a mistake."

Krnc usually starts by making a small painting on the spot, then reproducing it in the studio on a larger piece of paper. The small paintings are painted with whiskey instead of water, which doesn't freeze while painting outdoors during the winter. His use of whiskey is a distinction that led Krnc to be included in a small, prestigious painter's circle, The Whiskey Painters of America.

The legend of the Whiskey Painters starts in the 1950s when a traveling businessman and watercolor artist devised a way to paint in pubs while on business trips. He had a pocket-sized palette and used his cocktail to wet the paints rather than water. His paintings were small, 3 by 5 inches.

The group formed from that legend has only 160 members and an invitation-only policy.

"The only way you get in is if someone dies," Krnc said.