Utah County Plein Air Show 2022

12" x 16" Oil on Panel

The Utah County plein air event is going on now. Paintings for the competition were turned in last Saturday. The opening reception is this Friday, June 3rd from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Health and Justice building, 151 South University Avenue in Provo. For more information, visit their website at:

http://www.utahcountyart.com/index.php

11" x 14" Oil on Panel

These are my two entries fore the show. I chose to go to a couple of the higher elevations in the county for these two paintings. I'm looking forward to seeing what other's have entered into the show! The exhibit will be up through July, I understand, so if you happen to be in the area, come see the show!

Another Throwback Tuesday...or, The Girl in the Green Shirt.

22" x  15" Pastel on Paper

Here are a couple pastel portraits mentioned in an earlier post. Years ago I worked exclusively in dry media, such as graphite, charcoal and colored pencil. In the early 90's, wanting to make larger works and finding colored pencil unsuited for that, I switched from colored pencils to pastel. The pastel paintings were done on archival printmaking paper that had the right kind of  "tooth" for the kind of pastel painting I wanted to do. Pastel not only made larger works so much easier to do, but also improved value range and color saturation.

30" x  22" Pastel on Paper

Coincidentally, the model's family lived in the same neighborhood as a well-known painter named William Whitaker, and were friends with him. When the second painting shown in this post was accepted and hung in the Springville museum's Spring Salon, I was surprised to see it on the wall right beside a painting by the model's neighbor, William Whitaker.

Photographs by Hawkinson Photography.

Another Throwback Tuesday

Colored Pencil on Paper

This piece goes back to the '90s. I met the woman who modeled for this picture at (conveniently enough) an art supply store. It's a colored pencil piece on a full-sized sheet of archival printing paper, and one of the reasons I don't work in colored pencil anymore. That's a LOT of paper to cover using only tiny pencil points! I made a couple other paintings of her, but with pastel instead of colored pencil. Maybe I'll show those works in future "throwback" posts.

This portrait won a merit award for me in 1998 at the 74th Utah Spring Salon at the Springville Museum of Art, and was reproduced in the show catalog. I've neglected entering these kind of shows for a while now, in favor of painting for professional galleries. What museums like and what galleries want seem to be two different things. I've been considering getting active in museum shows again, while continuing to paint plein air landscapes for galleries, which I very much enjoy doing. The demands, opportunities and challenges that come with shows like The Spring Salon carry a different kind of excitement.

Photograph by Hawkinson Photography.

Sketching in Museums

There have already been a couple of posts in this blog about sketching in museums. You can find those posts here and here. The sketches featured in this post were made at the Edge of the Cedars Museum in the Four Corners region of the Colorado Plateau. Edge of the Cedars has a huge collection of ancient Anasazi pottery, artifacts, and other displays. The first sketch I did from their collection is shown above. If I remember right, the pot was around 12" or 14" across. The intricate pattern was a dark gray on very pale gray clay. It may look as though it might have been tedious to draw, but I found the pattern mesmerizing, and wanted to record it in my sketchbook. And - I had to draw it. For me, a photograph would not do. The image at the bottom of the sketchbook page (shown above) is the beginnings of a sketch of a bone-handled stone knife in the museum's collection. It's unfinished because the museum's closing time caught up with me.

The more recent sketch shown below is of a small gray pot in the same museum. I was intrigued by the pot's irregular shape and mysterious quality, in contrast to it's simplicity. Was it made to be hung over a fire outside of a pueblo? Or was it carried on long trips to special cliff faces where mysterious rock art can still be found?

Sketching in museums can be very useful and enjoyable. It sharpens drawing skills, offers glimpses into the thoughts and attitudes of artists from other times and places, and - for a little while - steeps you in the art-world-at-large. If you plan visiting a museum for sketching, be sure to check with them ahead of time. Many museums have policies regarding sketching. There may be restrictions on when you can sketch, sketching mediums, sketch size, and what may or may not be copied. Carry out your own trash and be sure to leave the place clean. Don't block the way for other museum goers. In fact, for me much of the fun of sketching in museums is talking with museum visitors and staff who seem fascinated with what I'm doing. Above all - DON'T TOUCH THE EXHIBITS! I never have, but I've heard a few horror stories about people who have.

On another note, this is the last week for you to VOTE for Peoples Choice Award in Terra Nova's Plein Air Provo exhibit. Polls are open now until Noon this Friday (Oct. 26th). You can vote by going to Terra Nova's blog: http://terranovagallery.wordpress.com/

Sketches from a Marble Statue

14" x 10" "White Charcoal" and Charcoal on Gray Paper

A few weeks ago I was visiting the Brigham Young University Museum of Art when I saw this statue on exhibit in the museum's lower level.  The marble statue depicts Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael as Abraham sends his wife and son away out into the wilderness.  Despite the unpleasant story it tells, I thought the statue would provide excellent opportunities for sketching.  Drawing from plaster casts - or in this case, marble statues - provides an opportunity to study how light shapes an object, and how bounced light reflects back into shadows. Since there is no variation in color or texture, you are able to clearly see and study the behavior of light on the larger form undistracted by other factors. What you learn from doing this can be applied to paintings of real people, or anything else for that matter.

A week or two after seeing the stature I obtained permission to sketch it, so I headed to the museum with my gear.  I forgot that it was Education Week at BYU and the campus was crowded.  It was hard to find a parking place close to the museum, but by circling the parking lot a few times I found a spot.  After meeting with the museum's Collections Manager, I headed downstairs and commenced drawing. Lots of people stopped to visit as I sketched - something I always enjoy.  Even security guards stopped briefly to chat.  That was a Tuesday and I did the drawing shown at the top of this post.

The drawing shown above might seem detailed to some, but my concern was for the larger shapes and I dispensed with minutiae.  The image below of one of the eyes shows the level of detail in the drawing:

Detail of Drawing

Tuesday I visited again for a second sketch, from a different angle, and on Friday I did a third angle. Here's last Friday's drawing:

It was on Friday that the man who restored the statue stopped to see the work.  He visited with me as I sketched and explained the fascinating story of the statue's restoration.  The statue is titled, "Dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael," and was carved by William Theed in England during the nineteenth century. When the restorer got the statue it was in seven pieces, with chunks missing.  He told me how he had cleaned the statue and put it back together, patching gaps where parts were missing.  I had no idea!  The repairs were not obvious to me, and I still couldn't see some of them even after he pointed them out!

One of the museums curators stopped and talked with me during the course of my drawing Friday. We talked about some of the museum's exhibits and I told him how much I enjoyed and now miss some past exhibits, especially Edward Austin Abbey and Carl Bloch.  He told me about an exhibit that the museum is planning to have in a year or so, so now I have the skinny on what's coming!

The three afternoons at the museum were, I think, time very well spent.  I enjoyed being there, in spite of wearing myself out.  I hope to return from time to time for more study.  Many thanks to the Brigham Young University Museum of Art for allowing me the opportunity to sketch there!

Drawing from Oliver Wendell Holmes

Charcoal and White Pencil on Gray Paper

Sometimes a portrait "drawn from life" isn't from a real person. Drawing from plaster casts provides a means to sharpen drawing skills and study how light defines a form. The plaster cast "model" doesn't replace real live models but allows a unique opportunity to more thoroughly explore light and shape in a model that never moves and needs no breaks. You certainly don't want a plaster cast that breaks! 

The drawing shown above is from a plaster bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes by Cyrus Edwin Dallin (1861-1944) in the collection of the Springville Museum of Art in Springville, Utah. Even though my drawing kind of looks like Holmes after some unfortunate event in a flour mill, I immensely enjoyed drawing it and was able to learn a lot by doing so. Whatever the level of skill attained, whatever level in one's professional career, improvement is always possible and desirable, so I look forward to more opportunities to learn from plaster casts.