Dragons in the Mountains

 

On My Way to the Ridge.

On a nice late summer day last week, there was nothing better I could think of doing than go exploring places in the mountains I haven't been yet. So that's what I did. After driving a ways up a jeep trail, I parked my 4Runner and continued walking through the woods on a trail to a large meadow. There I found another trail that led up onto a ridge. On that trail I came across this little red dragon, a horned toad which might have looked ferocious if it hadn't been but an inch long. After spending a few minutes watching and photographing the little lizard, I moved on up the trail. 

Little Horned Toad

Only a few steps later I found another, bigger dragon:

Bigger Horned Toad

Horned toads always seem to me a little like miniature dinosaurs, maybe something like a mini ankylosaurus. This horned toad, at four inches or so long, is the biggest one I've ever seen. Perhaps not quite dragon material to humans, but I imagine that's the way ants might see them. Horned toads eat ants.

Overlooking Diamond Fork

Continuing up the trail I reached the top of the ridge. From there I could see Strawberry Ridge to the east. To the west were the Wasatch Mountains, rising up nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. The view southward overlooked Diamond Fork Canyon and the Sheep Creek area.

Southern Wasatch Mountains; Mt. Nebo in the Far Distance.

There on the ridge I sat and enjoyed the evening. The weather was pleasant and the view spectacular!  As the evening grew late I watched a full moon rise in the east...

...and was also treated to a wonderful sunset in the west.

After dark, I hiked down off the ridge and headed back through the woods the way I had come. Broken beams of moonlight shone down through a forest of aspens and tall evergreens. Pale aspen tree trunks glowed in the bright moonlight. A small snake quickly crawled out of my path and into the brush by the trail. It was too dark by then to clearly see markings on the snake, but I'm guessing it was a racer or garter snake, judging from it's general size and shape. A rhythmic chorus of crickets and other night sounds accompanied my walk back to the car.

I ought to do this sort of thing more often.

Thanks for reading!

Wasatch Plein Air Paradise 2019

12" x 16" Oil on Panel

The Midway Art Association is holding it's annual plein air competition right now. Painting for the main competition began last Saturday. Paintings for the main competition had to be turned in yesterday, but smaller "paint outs" and "quick draws" continue through July 4th.

12" x 16" Oil on Panel

I've entered three paintings (all painted this week) into the main competition, but unfortunately won't be in any of the "paint outs" this year due to other commitments. The show runs through July the fourth (except Sunday) and is free to the public. All paintings are for sale. For more information about the event, contact Midway Art Association.

14" x 11" Oil on Panel

Summer Solstice 2019

8" x 10" Oil on Panel

Happy Summer Solstice! Here's a couple recent plein air paintings that I think have an appropriately summery feel to them.

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

This year so far has seen more rain than usual. Nature's also put on daily displays of cloudscapes of all kinds. Clouds can be difficult to paint en plein aire because of their fleet and transient nature. I think this year will provide ample opportunities to take on the challenge of cloudscapes in oil paint. I hope I'm up to it!

Late Summer Ranch Road

18" x 24" Oil on Panel

The weather's still rather warm, but nights are becoming a little cooler and autumn color is beginning to sneak into the summer greenery. The rancher who owns this property is letting me have access to his ranch for plein air painting. It opens up new places to paint in the valley not far from where I live. On an earlier trip to the ranch I saw this scene and was struck by it, but only had a 9" x 12" pochade box with me. I thought it should be painted larger than that, so I returned earlier this week with a much bigger panel and made the painting shown above. Ranches are great places to paint! I'm looking forward to returning there for more paintings.

Utah County Plein Air Art Show

16" x 20" Oil on Panel

This Friday, August 3rd, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM, is the opening for the Utah County Plein Air Art Show, sponsored by the Utah County Arts Board. The exhibit will be at the Utah County Health and Justice Building, 151 South University Ave, Provo, Utah. The show is free and will be up until the 25th of August.

11" x 14" Oil on Panel

Shown here are the two paintings I did for the show, One painted west of Springville, and the other west of Provo. All paintings in the show are for sale. This is the first plein air event for the UCAB. It's a relatively small show, but I believe it's well worth supporting. The Utah Valley area really ought to have it's own plein air event. Besides, as the event becomes larger and more successful, I'll be able to say, "I was at the first one!" 

Come out and see the exhibit, and if you see any paintings you really like and want, you can buy them! For more information about the Utah County Art Board, click here.

If you have the opportunity, you can see more of my paintings in person at these galleries::
In Salt Lake City: http://www.evergreengallery.com/
In Logan, Utah: http://loganfineartgallery.com/
In Ivins, Utah: https://www.facebook.com/juniperskyfineartgallery/

Summer Cottonwood Copse

11" x 14" Oil on Panel

For this painting, it was back to the Spanish Fork River trail. Technically, it's still a couple weeks or so until the official start of summer, but the weather isn't waiting. It was quite warm the day I painted this, and scattered clouds grew into thunderheads over the mountains. That didn't interfere with painting, though, and I was able to make the piece shown above. I'm happy I found this place. Plans are, I'll be spending more time painting in this area.

Fyi, if you ever want to see any of my paintings in person, you can find them at these galleries:

     In Salt Lake City: http://www.evergreengallery.com/
     In Logan, Utah: http://loganfineartgallery.com/
     In Ivins, Utah: https://www.facebook.com/juniperskyfineartgallery/

Field and Trees on a Late Spring Day

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

Some days I just drive until I find something to paint, park on the side of the road, set up a pochade box, and go to work. These trees caught my attention last Thursday.

Cottonwoods along a Bank

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

This was painted yesterday. It's a painting of cottonwood and willow trees southwest of town, looking toward the Lake Mountains. It's a warm day in the middle of May, and clouds were building - but not too much. It was a fine day for plein air painting!

Early Spring Ranch

8" x 10" Oil on Panel

Spring weather is crazy. Short sleeve shirt weather one day, snow the next. It'll be a month or so before trees are fully leafed out, but I can't wait. I want to go out and paint. The painting shown above was painted a few days ago on one of the fairly nice days.

I still use the first pochade box I ever built.

The scene is one I've painted a couple times before. The trees were fully green then. Even leafless, though, the trees are interesting, along with the collection of sheds and other ranch things around them. It was a wonderful day and a wonderful place to go paint!

Happy Vernal Equinox 2018

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

And what a nice Equinox to go out and paint in! It's still kind of "stick season," that is, the time of year when there's no leaves on the trees. But trees are budding, birds are singing, and frogs are croaking in the marshes. I'd originally set out today with the idea to do a really little painting; 5" x 7" or even smaller, but when I saw this scene, I decided it deserved at least a 9" x 12" panel. That's the finished painting at the top of this post.

Here's the pochade box I painted in today. After toning the panel, the composition was mapped out. This photo shows the sky painted and the mountains blocked in. Where the tree trunks were in the initial composition was largely obliterated when the sky and mountains were painted. That's OK. They're easy enough to find again.

In this photo we see the middle ground blocked in and the tree trunks getting painted again. I didn't follow how the trees were exactly, but modified them a little to suit the painting.

This photo shows the finished painting. By this time, the light had changed and the scene no longer looked as it did when I started painting. This is the phase where I paint more from memory than direct observation, and instead of copying what's in front of me, focus on making a painting.

Up the Canyon

8" x 10" Oil on Panel

Last Saturday was the nicest day yet this year, so I took an 8" x 10" pochade box for a short hike up a local canyon. A side trail led to this overlook, and that's where I set up and painted. There's still a little snow around the lower slopes, but I think it won't hang around much longer. There will likely still be a spring flurry or two, or three, but those kinds of things are only winter's last gasps. Spring is gaining momentum!

Another sign of spring: There's a bug stuck to the painting near the upper left corner. In plein air painting jargon, we jokingly call that an "eagle." See it up there in the sky? It'll be easier to get off of the painting once the paint's dry. No harm done, except for the poor bug.

Photos from a Winter Walk

Tuesday was a wonderful day for a walk in the country. Winter can be rather unpleasant around here, but not on this day! The sky was so blue. Temperatures weren't too cold. Blue shadows contrasted with warm sunlight, highlighting the sepia, ochre and umber colors of marsh grasses and brush. A narrow first quarter moon shown faintly over the Wasatch Mountains.

There's always a ready-to-go day pack in my car. Among other things that stay in that day pack is a cheap little camera. It's there ready for hikes or even when I go on shorter walks. Usually the camera stays in the pack, but occasionally I get it out. On this walk, the camera came out of the pack as soon as I saw the bald eagle. The eagle landed in a tree close by as I stood looking out over the wintry landscape. Upon landing, the eagle gave a short series of high pitched staccato cries. Quite attention getting!

Admittedly, this eagle photo is not much better than those pictures you see published of bigfoot or UFOs. My attempt to work closer for a better photograph of the eagle only managed to annoy it, and it spread it's impressive wings and departed. I wish I had a better camera with me on these walks and hikes, but unfortunately, after a camera of mine died in a dust storm in Southern Utah a few years ago, I'm leery of taking any of my better cameras with me on these trips. The cheep little $65 Casio worked well enough for the rest of these pictures, I believe.

There were a few smaller hawks around on that bright winter's day. A flock of juncos flitted about through the latticework of winter-bare tree branches and underbrush by the trail. A red-shafted flicker made itself known by it's distinctive "kyeer!" call.

There's still quite a bit of ice on the lake. The ice seems thin, though, and there appears to be open water out to the west.

Here's those same mountains, seen through a filter of cottonwood trees.

In the other direction, seen across open ranch land, are some of my favorite stomping grounds; the canyons and ridges of the Wasatch Mountains.

The day's walk comes to a close as I return to my car. Before driving away I take one more look at a cloud-haloed Mount Timpanogos.

New Years Day Plein Air Painting Revisited

This will be an attempt to show step-by-step the painting I made on New Years Day. I hope it will be informative in spite of it's shortcomings. I'm not a wizard with photography, so there's some inconsistency from one shot to the next. Editing photographs of paintings is another challenge. It seems that no matter how hard I work at editing photos, my best hope is to get the photo to look somewhat similar to the original painting. It never looks exactly the same. Sometimes I just take the photos over again. However, you cannot take in-progress photos over again. Also, the finished photographs of paintings will look different from program to program, and from one computer monitor to another. That being said, here's the pictures:

The first thing I do when beginning an on-location painting is tone the panel with a thinned mix of colors. The tone layer is then painted over without allowing it to dry. Since the tone layer is still wet, it mixes somewhat with the next layers of paint, influencing them. Painting wet paint over wet paint also prevents the thinned tone layer from drying into a weak layer.

Using the same color mix as the tone, the composition develops and the darks begin to be worked out.

In the next photo, the darks are established further, and some color begins to be added.

As more color is added, the painting progresses from dark colors to light colors.

Admittedly, more happened in between the last photo and the next picture than is shown here, but I got caught up in paining and forgot to keep shooting pics. The next picture shows the development of distant clouds, and texture in the trees, brush, and marsh grasses.

The next picture shows further development of all parts of the painting, depending on where I think work is needed. 

A few more touch-ups, and the painting is signed and finally finished! 

The last picture shown was photographed with a different camera than the rest of the pictures in this post. I was unhappy with the quality I got with the old little cheapie Casio camera used for the other pictures, so the finished work was rephotographed with a better camera. I'm still not entirely pleased with the photograph, but I'm happy to have the opportunity to show these in-progress pictures to you. I hope that this series of pictures, along with the brief descriptions accompanying them, will give you some insight into the workings of some of the plein air paintings that come from my pochade boxes or easels. Thanks for Reading!

New Years Day 2018

8" x 10" Oil on Panel

Thought I should start this year off right by going plein air painting. The weather seemed to agree, being an exceptionally mild day for January first. The day was mostly sunny, with only small patches of snow lingering here and there on the ground. I went to a place west of Springville where some cottonwood trees grew along the bank of a canal. 

The water level in the canal looked unusually high. Taking a short walk down by the trees, I discovered the reason for the high water. In the canal by the trees were a couple beaver dams.

Here's How I Spent New Years Day.

The picture at the top of this post shows the painting I made on New Years Day. Colors used were cadmium yellow light, yellow ochre, cadmium red, anthraquinone red (think "permanent alizarin crimson"), cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, and titanium white.

During the course of the painting I took several in-progress photographs of it with an old, cheap Casio camera. It might take a few days, but I may post those in-progress pictures after I can edit them and decide if they're post-able. Stay tuned!

Down in the Valley and up by a Mountain Lake

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

A couple more paintings made in the last little while share this post. The first one was painted west of town, near the lake. My interest was in the distant ridges, and in the clouds passing overhead. Some things in a landscape, like shadows and clouds, move. Moving things are a little more challenging to paint from life. Clouds move even faster than cast shadows, so they get painted first. Whether painting cast shadows or clouds, a quick lay-in starts the process off, then memory is used to finish it. 

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

The second was painted at an alpine lake, nearly 10,000 feet elevation in the Wasatch Mountains. The lake is in the Albion Basin, and is a popular destination for hikers of all ages. Social media and ease of access have made it perhaps a little too popular. The trail is only about two miles from parking area to lake. On this particular day there were so many people winding their way up the trail to the lake that I felt like I was joining a pilgrimage rather than going on a nature hike. The lake and surrounding mountains are nonetheless beautiful. I set up on a rocky point that juts out into the water. From there I painted a group of trees near the shore and across part of the lake.

While painting, I noticed that there were several salamanders swimming around in the lake near me. They are young tiger salamanders, about five or six inches long. A new discovery for me! I haven't seen salamanders in Utah until now.

There were also lots of brightly clad tourists around the lake. Here I was out in "wilderness," and never before have I had so many people standing around me watching me paint! I was glad the rocky point I was on was was relatively narrow, which allowed only so many spectators at a time.

Salamanders can swim in the lake, but according to a sign at the top of the trail, people aren't allowed to. Yet, the cold water of the lake is irresistible to some, and a few people jumped in and began swimming. Several, especially children, waded near shore. Before long, a man (I presume he was a ranger) stood high on a rock on the other side of the lake and yelled at the swimmers to get out of the water. "Can't you read the sign? No swimming!" A uniformed ranger then walked around the lake brusquely telling anyone who had so much as their toes in the water to get out of the water.

The weather that day was wonderful. It wasn't until late in the day that clouds moved in, blocking the sun. Shortly after finishing the painting, I began the hike back down the trail. Peak season for alpine flowers is past, but the meadows the trail wound through were still richly speckled with color. Lupine, paintbrush, aster, and other wildflowers of all colors brightened the meadows along the way. A deer browsed near meadow's edge by a stand of evergreen trees.

Down in the Valley and up on a Mountain Ridge

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

Here are two paintings made recently in the July heat. The first one is of marsh willows near the lake. The temperature that day was over 100° F. The paper towels I use to wipe paint off of brushes became damp from sweat running down my arm as I worked. 

When I first arrived at this spot, some ducks in a little canal (shown in the painting) were startled. The ducks, which included a few adults, some half-grown ducklings, and some very young ducklings, took off up the stream. That is, all but the littlest ducklings, who seemed unalarmed by everything. The group of little fluffy yellow ducklings paddled around through the duckweed apparently unconcerned by my presence. I kind of enjoyed their company.

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

One way to beat the summer heat is to head up into the mountains. The second painting was painted on a granite ridge way up Big Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch Mountains.

I'm not real familiar with Big Cottonwood Canyon, so after parking in a ski resort parking lot I just picked a trail and began hiking, confident I would find something to paint. The steep trail wound up past big stands of aspens and evergreens, and through alpine meadows covered with dazzling wildflowers of every color. I came across several scenes that would have been worth a painting, but I could see a couple trees high up on a ridge and kept pushing on to reach them. Storm clouds moved in, but I set to painting anyways. 

As I painted, I noticed that about a hundred and fifty yards or so down the slope from me, a moose lay at the edge of a meadow near a thick stand of evergreens. The moose's ears were constantly flicking, no doubt against mosquitoes like the ones that were beginning to bother me. Other wildlife I saw that day were a couple mule deer in their red summer coats, and a golden-mantled ground squirrel that briefly ventured out onto the granite boulders I was painting. 

The storm clouds never dropped rain nor produced any lightning. The storm of mosquitoes, however, was becoming nearly intolerable. By the end of the painting I was killing mosquitoes two or three per swat. Unfortunately, my insect repellent was with my sunscreen, forgotten and left back in the car. In spite of that, I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and the wonderful beauty of the alpine meadows and granite peaks and ridges. I'm definitely looking forward to more painting trips up into both Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood canyons, next time with insect repellent, of course.