Merry Christmas 2012

There aren't any recent works of mine Christmasy enough for this post, so I dug deep into the past and pulled out a couple wintry scenes done in colored pencil from when I lived in Pennsylvania. My style is completely different now, but I thought it would be fun to share these with you.

 

Early one winter morning I was up to see the twilight. Looking out I saw the deep blue of sky and snow becoming split by warmer tones near the horizon. Also there was the waning crescent moon anticipating the coming sunrise. I made a sketch and later took photos of the scene. From those I made the drawing above.

On a winter's walk in woods just outside of town I saw the trees in the scene above. Struck by the intricate lacework of the spreading branches and twigs, I got out a sketchbook and recorded my impression of the scene. Although whitetail deer frequent the area, they weren't there when I was. Someone I knew had a few captive whitetails in a fenced area, so I went to visit him. There I sketched the deer and took photos. Later I also studied photo references in library books. From those sketches and photos came the drawing shown above.

 I found the initial tree sketch the finished work is based on:

 



These days I prefer painting plein air, and portraits drawn from life, but would like one day to do some more studio works from references.

Merry Christmas!

A Winter's Night Painting Tale

8" x 10" Oil on Canvas Panel

Today, December 21, the Winter Solstice happens where I live. For some of you it might be on the 22nd...I think. Figuring out the timezones for this event is beyond what I want to do with this post, so my advice is – celebrate both days! Of course for some of you it may already be the 22nd. Somewhere I read that daylight will officially be about 9 ¼ hours long. Or maybe I should say short. It's the night that'll be long. With a tip of the hat to the longest night of the year, I thought I'd write a post about plein air painting – at night! The painting above is about my third attempt at painting outdoors at night and was done a winter or two ago in Heber Valley near Midway. The musical term “nocturne” is also used for these paintings made on the shady side of the planet.

Last January I was tramping around on some ridges by Goshen Valley looking for likely paintings. These hills are dotted with juniper trees and sagebrush. The snow that covered the ground had a slight crust to it's surface. Just below the crest of a sand hill, I set up to paint. Several deer were browsing in the fields below or wandering along paths through the sagebrush. After completing the painting I hiked up onto higher rocky ridges to scout out sites for possible future paintings.   

It was well after dark when I began hiking back down. With many years experience hiking at night, and snow on the ground, seeing my way was easy so I left the flashlight in my pack. As I neared the sand ridge, a full moon rose from behind the Wasatch mountains to the east. The moonlight cast a pale blue-purple glow onto ribbons and patches of snow between dark shapes of junipers. Deep blue shadows stretched from tree to tree.

There have been nocturnes painted by others that I have enjoyed very much. The night has been a part of my outdoor experience perhaps nearly as much as the day. For a while I've wanted to try my hand at nighttime plein air painting but suspecting it would be difficult, put it off. The opportunity provided by this night could no longer be resisted, though. Setting up a pochade box and strapping on a headlamp, I was going to try.

It was while into this painting that a chorus of coyotes struck up their wild harmonies. The coyotes' songs seemed to come from several directions at once, all around me. As usual, the coyotes sang for only a short time, then left me to the quiet of the winter night.

Farther into the painting, I heard the sound of footsteps in the crusty snow approaching from behind! Quickly turning around, the headlamp beam revealed only the tree directly behind me. Stepping around the tree I looked for the source of the footsteps but saw nothing. The footsteps had been too heavy to be a coyote. Most likely it was a deer that bolted once it became aware I was there. Mountain lions have been known to pass through this area, but I think the footfalls of a mountain lion would have sounded different. That is if a mountain lion cared to be heard at all!

More or less completing my first attempt at a nocturne, I packed up my gear and hiked down the sand ridge as the full moon rose ever higher in an indigo sky. I thought about how I was out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night, surrounded by coyotes, while some unknown large thing walked up behind me. Then I said to myself,

“Man, I gotta do this more often!”

Lunar Plein Air Studies

Small Sketches in a Small Sketchbook

Here are a couple studies I made during a lunar eclipse. It was sketched in colored pencil on an August night in 1989 when I lived in Pennsylvania. To make this sketch I would go into the back yard and observe the eclipse for a while, then rush through the back door into the kitchen where I had my sketchpad and colored pencils. With the kitchen lights on to see what I was doing, I would sketch as much as memory would permit, then go back out into the darkness to observe the eclipse more. I did this several times over the course of these two little studies. Observe - sketch - repeat. The top image is totality. The lower sketch is about 45 minutes later. I wasn't concerned with the lunar montes, mares or craters. That information could be easily had another time. The goal of these studies was to capture the color of the event and the spherical appearance of the eclipsed moon. The full moon usually looks more disk-like to me, but during an eclipse, it appears as an orange ball. This is information I can use in any future studio works that might need it. In fact, I did a larger colored pencil drawing of a night scene of bighorns, jagged rocky cliffs, and the moon back lighting part of the scene using these studies. That drawing sold several years ago, and unfortunately I have no pictures of it. I do have ideas for future works with the lunar eclipse theme, though.

Of course, a lunar eclipse is a fascinating thing to observe whether you're sketching one or not, so go see one!