A Late Afternoon in June

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

Tomorrow is the First day of summer. It's a great time of the year to paint in spite of the heat. Of course, if the weather becomes too hot, the Wasatch Mountains are close by to provide a cooler place to go. Paradoxically though, the high mountain altitudes can provide relief from the heat, but not necessarily from the sun.

This was painted on a pleasantly warm afternoon, a few days before June started really cranking up the heat. I've driven past these stands of cottonwood trees west of town many times, thinking I would stop and paint them some day. That day came late last week as I was on my way to paint somewhere else. The air was full of fluffy cottonwood seeds, but I decided to risk getting cottonwood fluff stuck all over my painting anyway. Turned out that, in spite of flurries of fluffy seeds, few seeds stuck to my palette and none to the painting. 

Three Women

10" x 8" Oil on Panel

Here are some more portrait sketches from the weekly portrait sessions. All three were made using oil paint and were painted from live models.

The first one shown is the most recent, and was painted last Wednesday. It was made using my most Zorn-ish color palette: yellow ochre, cadmium red (instead of vermillion), ivory black, and titanium white (instead of flake white).

8" x 6" Oil on Panel

The next two were painted with a few changes or additions to that palette. Having been two or three weeks since they were painted, however, I'm not sure I can remember everything I did differently. For the second painting shown here, more Naples yellow and less white was used. It was an experiment to see what would happen if a pale yellow was largely substituted for white.

10" x 8" Oil on Panel

The third painting is of a substitute model. She filled in on the spur of the moment when the originally scheduled model failed to show. This was painted on an entirely untoned panel to see what effect that would have on the portrait.

For more about portrait sessions, go to "Labels" on the side bar and click on "portrait", "sketching" or "drawing".

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.

Mount Olympus in May

11" x 14" Oil on Panel

Late last week I went to Olympus Hills Park in Salt Lake City for another visit with Mount Olympus. This painting was made just outside the outfield fence of the south softball diamond. I had plans to paint from right field again, but some kids were already batting a ball around on the diamond when I got there, so they had first dibs. Just outside the chain link fence worked just fine for me. I was a little worried about the weather clouding completely over, but the wonderful partly cloudy skies held out all day. It was a great day to be outside.

Portrait Model with Red Hair

8" x 6" Oil on Panel

This week's post shows the painting I made at last Thursday's portrait session. I arrived late, but so did the model so I didn't really lose any time. There was even a good spot for me to set up my paintbox and easel. 

Colors used were slightly different this time. I mistook a tube of naples yellow for a different yellow and accidentally squeezed some onto my palette before realizing the mistake. Then I thought "Why not try it?" and found it to be a very good color to use in light skin tones. Other colors used were cadmium yellow lemon, cadmium red purple, and ivory black.

For more about portrait sessions, go to "Labels" on the side bar and click on "portrait", "sketching" or "drawing.

Throwback...Tuesday?

Colored Pencil on Paper

Not just a throwback, but a throw way back. This goes back to the time when I drew with colored pencils. It goes back to when I would roam forest and fields with a Pentax 35mm SLR film camera photographing wildflowers and wild fauna. Then I would send the negatives somewhere to get developed and prints made, and have to wait to see how the pictures turned out. Sometimes I would sit in the grass and sketch using colored pencils. Back then sketching was faster than photography.

Late in the Summer monarch butterflies would migrate through the region of Pennsylvania where I lived, refueling in fields full of goldenrod and joe-pie weed. Butterflies don't sit for sketches very well, so for the drawing shown above I used various photos of monarch butterflies, goldenrod, etc., that I had taken with the old SLR on a few of my wild wanderings.

A Couple Portraits From Early May

8" x 6" Oil on Panel

It's been a little while since I've done any portrait sketches from life. The first image in this post shows the portrait I did last Thursday at Casey Childs studio. Colors used were yellow ochre, cadmium red purple, ivory black, and titanium white. That is, all except for the necklace pendant. There was no way I could get the color of that pendant with a Zorn(ish) palette. After trying once or twice to change it into something else, I gave in and squeezed a dab of Holbein's "permanent green" (a hue which contains phthalo green) onto my palette, using that color for the necklace pendant only.

8" x 6" Oil on Panel

The second image shows the portrait I painted the day before at Howard Lyon's studio. That day I was in the mood to paint the shadow side of the subject with only a little rim lighting visible. Colors used were yellow ochre, cadmium red, ivory black, and titanium white.

For more about portrait sessions, go to "Labels" on the side bar and click on "portrait", "sketching" or "drawing.