Barns, Sheds and Shacks

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

This jumbled collection of ranch buildings beneath a big cottonwood tree has attracted my attention for quite some time. I finally was able to set up my pochade box on a neighboring ranch, from where I was able to paint the scene shown above. The day I visited the ranch no one else was there, but I had the companionship of several head of cattle, a couple horses, a mule, and a bunch of chickens.

It's been difficult to paint en plein aire lately. There's huge wildfires in the mountains not far from here. Often smoke from the fires obscure the mountains, and sometimes makes it hard to see here in the valley. The smoke is unpleasant to eyes and lungs. On this day a change in the wind cleared the air in most of the valley making painting on location possible. 

To date the fires have burned one hundred and thirteen thousand acres. Roads in the area of the fires have been closed and communities near the fires have been evacuated. So far no homes have been lost and hopefully none will. 

A week or two ago I was planning to go up Payson Canyon to the Nebo Loop Road to paint, but most of that is charred now, parts of it still burning. Those plans have also gone up in smoke. For the foreseeable future, I'll be looking elsewhere to paint.

Hiking and Painting

7" x 5" oil on Panel

All throughout my life I've enjoyed going for hikes into wild country, whether it's forest, desert or mountains. I'm so glad that I live in a place, and my health is good enough, that I can continue to hit the trail for all day excursions. Likewise I've enjoyed drawing for probably my whole life, and am so happy I've been able to develop that into painting. It's wonderful that people enjoy my work and are willing to purchase my paintings from galleries and shows.

For a long time I've wanted to combine those two interests, hiking and painting, but usually find myself doing one or the other, not both at the same time. Much of the plein air painting equipment I've built for myself is sturdy but light, and easily carried. However, the vast majority of my plein air paintings are done either close to my car, or only a quarter mile to a mile away from the car.

Last Saturday I finally put the two things, hiking and painting, together when I took my little 5" x 7" pochade box on a hike up a canyon in the Wasatch Mountains.The hike started in the early afternoon at the mouth of the canyon. A few miles and a few thousand feet in gained elevation later, I finally decided on a spot to set up and paint. Though the day had begun with clear blue skies, by the time I'd reached the upper part of the canyon a general overcast had moved in. Grey skies dulled the mountain vistas I had hoped to paint, so instead I chose a small stand of aspen trees near the edge of a meadow. The little oil study didn't take very long, and was finished around sunset. My hike back down the canyon to the trail head was made after dark. The little oil study from that day can be seen at the beginning of this post.

A Little Practice

Not every painting I make is intended for a gallery wall. At times it's good to paint in ways and/or choose subjects that are out of the ordinary for me. Doing so can lead to discoveries that influence in positive ways the methods I use and things I normally paint. A week or two ago I took one of my neglected 6" x 8" pochade boxes down to the lake. Because of the way this pochade box is made, it will also hold 6" x 6" and 4" x 6" panels. The tiny 4" x 6" panel is a good quick sketch size.

Making little pochades is also a contributing factor in getting out into nature on such a pleasant day!

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.

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!

Along the way to the Marina

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

Here's a painting made last week. It was a warm summer day and lots of people had headed to the lake. So many in fact, that parking in the state park had filled up and spilled out onto surrounding roads. I was lucky enough to find a good spot to park, and hiked a short ways to an area just north of the marina and campground. The park was crowded, and there were watercraft galore out on the lake, but there was no one else where I went to paint. Cottonwood trees were shedding flurries of fluffy seeds, which could be a problem because they stick to wet paintings. Thick swarms of midges were near the lake shore. They also stick to wet paintings. The open area between the cottonwoods and the marshy lake shore was mostly free of both problems. Besides, it had the visual angle on the trees I wanted to paint. So that's where I set up for the day.

The marshes, trees, and fields near the lake are some of my favorite places to paint, or even just go for walks. Wildlife is one of the attractions there. On the day of the painting, six big white pelicans circled in a thermal not far behind me. The pelican's long black-tipped wings lent grace to their otherwise ungainly bodies and huge orange-yellow beaks. Four seagulls circled with the pelicans. I had to stop painting and watch the show. Three more seagulls joined the pelicans, then two more gulls joined in the dance. I wondered why the seagulls seemed to want to be with the pelicans. It soon became apparent, however, that the seagulls were not there for the pelicans. The gulls were there for the thermal, which the six big white showy pelicans had inadvertently advertised to them. The seagulls gained altitude faster and much higher than the pelicans, then slid off the top of the column in twos and threes heading north. The pelicans labored to gain altitude, rising maybe a hundred feet above the ground. They circled for a few minutes before heading off together southward. The show was over. I returned to painting.

Shade Tree

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

There's a place on the otherwise treeless bench trail where a tree provides welcome shade in the summertime. For anyone venturing onto the trail during the afternoon hours, that shade is sweet relief indeed from the searing pressure of the sun's rays. 

The irony is, to paint that shade I had to stand out in the sun, and in front of an outcrop of pale rock that reflected the sun's intensity. During the course of the painting I emptied every water bottle from my day pack and still ended the session thirsty! 

But then, hot sun notwithstanding, it was good to be out painting.

A passerby stopped briefly to visit and take a picture of my painting. Later that evening he sent a copy of his photo to me.

Photo courtesy of Bryan Dahlberg

Thanks Bryan!

Partly Sunny

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

It was a great day to go painting, in spite of the threat of storms and my own, well, inertia. Most of the afternoon had passed when I drove out to find a place to paint. It took a bit of exploring to find a spot convincing enough to get me stop and set up a pochade box. Storms moved in over the mountains behind me, but stayed out of the valley where I was. Forecasted strong winds others had warned me about never became a problem, either. I painted until after sunset. Most of the storms had cleared by then. That was when soothing milder temperatures settled in, replacing the heat of the afternoon. Then the underside of clouds reflected a brilliant red from a sun already below the horizon, and a big full moon rose over the Wasatch Mountains. It was a great day to go painting.

Painting on Decker Road

11" x 14" Oil on Panel

When I did this painting for Midway's plein air competition this year, I took some in-process photographs of it. These photos not only show some of my painting process, but also give an idea of some of the challenges of painting outdoors. You can click on any of the pictures to see a larger image.

At the Trailhead

The day of the painting, skies were partly cloudy. I parked at the gated trailhead in the Wasatch Back and proceeded to walk down the trail to a spot I knew of from previous hikes.

Headed Down the Trail

Some of the Wildflowers Along the Way

Upon arriving at the place I wanted to paint, a mile or so down the trail, I set up an easel with an 11" x 14" panel on it. That's when I discovered I had forgotten paints and brushes! There was nothing to do but march a mile back up the trail to the car and return to the easel with the previously forgotten items.

Headed Back Down the Trail

Might As Well Enjoy More of the Wildflowers

My Set Up

Finally I could get to painting! With everything needed at hand this time, I laid out the colors on my palette and mixed up the dark purple I like to use in place of black. I use a "split primary" palette, and add a cool green. You can read more about the paints and palette I use here. 

The panel is toned with a thinned film of the dark purple mix, then wiped. Before that layer can dry, the painting is sketched onto the panel with a brush, and general areas are painted in with the approximate color and value I want. The darks are placed first, then I work progressively towards the lights, generally - but not always - from front to back. Once that is done, I begin to refine the painting, working from back to front.

In the next photo, you can see that the sky and the mountains have been developed further. You can also see something else. Tiny dark specks. This was the beginning of ...

The flies and gnats were pretty bad that day. The flies were big enough that when they landed on the painting or palette, they usually stuck only momentarily before freeing themselves from the gooey colors. The gnats, however, stuck to the painting like iron filings to a magnet. I was beginning to worry I would have another experience like one I wrote about in one of my earliest blog posts. The little winged pestilences affected my painting rhythm, too. My rhythm was like: paint, paint swat swat swat, paint, paint swat swat swat, This went on for most of the painting. One big horse fly was particularly bothersome. Surprisingly, none of the flies bit me, but the gnats did. Plenty.

The next photo shows how the foliage on the trees was built up. You can also see more gnats stuck to the painting.

In the next photo, the foreground begins to be developed. I've also removed most of the gnats and repaired the damage. That was done two or three times during the course of this painting. 

At this point, the weather had gone from partly cloudy to completely overcast. That caused a shadow across the top of the painting from the easel. There was no way to avoid the shadow, so it shows up in most of the remaining photographs. Hopefully, the shadow won't hinder your ability to see the painting process.

The foreground and other areas continue to be developed, as seen in the next picture. The painting is almost finished. Also, more gnats have stuck themselves all over the painting.

The wind began to increase. I braced the easel to keep it from blowing over. The painting was finished, the final gnats removed (well, most of them), and their damage undone. The painting and equipment was packed up for the hike back. The sky grew darker and the wind increased dramatically. I was sandblasted by blowing dust as I walked back up the trail to the car, but the painting made it home safe and sound. The last photo shows the painting after it had been photographed a day or two later in good lighting, and a gnat-free environment. The painting sold that Saturday at the show.

Decker Road, 11" x 14" Oil on Panel

Cemetery Statuary

12" x 9" Oil on Panel

This is a painting I made at a local cemetery in October. The plan was to use it for a Halloween post on this blog but that didn't happen. Maybe it just wasn't Halloweeny enough, but I think it's worth a spot on this blog. 

Besides being an experience painting something I haven't before, in a place I haven't painted before, this was also another practice using only three colors. This time those colors were cadmium lemon yellow, cadmium red, and ivory black, plus white.

The Day's Palette

I started by toning the panel gray and wiping out the light areas of the statue. Those areas were kept basic and kind of rough at this point. The focus was on keeping general shapes in correct proportion to each other. Details would come later.

Then I worked on building up the dark tones. 

As you can see in the previous two photos, the background is bright behind the statue. I wanted that dark evergreen on the right to be behind the statue in the painting. That would make the lighter statue stand out more, but I wanted the angle of the statue from this viewpoint. So - I moved the tree!

The last image shows some more progress on the painting.

The finished painting is shown at the top of this post.

This was a fun opportunity to paint something different. It was kind of a combination of plein air painting with figure painting. Hope you enjoy seeing the painting and the process!

Pictures from Spring City 2015

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

The Spring City Plein Air competition was last week. Here are some of my pictures from that event. Shown above is the first painting I did for the show. The view is looking west toward the little town of Wales, in central Utah.

The second photo shows the painting in the pochade box, with the subject of the painting in the background. You can see how the shape of the trees was changed in the painting. I liked where the trees were, but that tree sticking up on the right wasn't going to work in this composition, so it had to go!

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

The first painting I made on the second day didn't turn out, so I scraped and wiped it and reused the panel the next day. In the mean time I was able to complete another painting on the second day. That painting is shown above.

Here's the painting still in the box. The scene is out of view to the left of the photo. The box is turned to avoid bright glare for the sake of the photo.

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

It was very windy on the third day, making plein air painting even more challenging. The panel that was wiped the day before was used for my last painting of the trip, shown above.

Part of my trip was spent camped in a pasture at 7500 feet in the San Pitch Mountains west of Sanpete Valley. The accommodations were spacious, the scenery was great, and the price was right - free! Finding a suitably level spot in the meadow that was free of cow pies took a little hunting, but it worked out fine. A good tent, two stacked self inflating air mattresses, a pillow and a wool blanket, plus a fleece sleeping bag liner, made for a comfortable night's sleep. I was awakened three or four times during the night when small groups of lowing cattle passed the camp. What cows have to moo about at four in the morning, I don't know, but moo they did.

The Spring City plein air competition might be my last one for this year, but I always look forward to more outdoor painting, whether it's with an event or out on my own!