Holiday Shows and Exhibitions 2014

Two weeks until Christmas! A little less than two weeks left to do your holiday shopping. If you're looking for a unique gift for someone, a plein air oil painting would be a gift to enjoy for a lifetime! Evergreen Framing Co. & Gallery in Salt Lake City is showing several of my plein air oil paintings, plus a wide variety of works by other Utah artists.

The picture at the top of this post shows some of the paintings I have at Evergreen Framing Co. & Gallery, along with some paintings by David Meikle and works by other artists. The image directly above is another angle of some of those paintings.

The third image shows a few of the paintings I have at the Window Box Gallery in Provo. As with all the galleries showing my paintings, the Window Box Gallery also has a wide variety of works by several artists. They include Kimbal Warren, part of whose painting shows in the lower left of the above photograph. The picture below is a closeup of a couple paintings of mine at the Window Box Gallery.

More of my paintings can be found at Logan Fine Art Gallery in Logan, Utah, and at Juniper Sky Fine Art Gallery in Ivins, Utah (near St. George). Click on any of the links in this post for more information about these galleries. If you're able to visit one or another of the galleries, you might find an original painting of mine that would make a wonderful gift for someone on your list, or for yourself!

Charcoal Sketch - Blonde Woman

12" x 9" Charcoal on Paper

This is the portrait sketch I did at yesterday's live drawing session. Drawn with vine charcoal, charcoal pencil, and "white charcoal".

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

My Palette

Probably what most people imagine a painter's palette to look like is an oval or kidney shaped thin board with a thumb hole in it. I don't have one of those. While the traditional palette might work well in a studio, that's not where I do most of my painting. I paint outdoors. Rectangular palettes are more packable and easier to transport. The palette board in my biggest paint box does have a thumb hole, but I sometimes wish it didn't. I rarely use the thumb hole, but when I do I usually end up with a painted thumb.

The color palette I use is a basic split primary. Of course it's arguable what "primary" colors are, but for all practical purposes here, I mean yellow, red and blue. By split primaries I mean a "warm" and a "cool" version of  yellow, red, and blue - with an extra color or two thrown on the palette. A generous pile of white is always a part of my color palette.

I don't think I'm too much of a stickler concerning paint brands. M Graham, Utrecht, Holbein, Gamblin, and Grumbacher are some of the brands I use, but I'm not adverse to trying other brands. Anything with good color, good strength, and lightfast works for me. I avoid "student" or "studio" grade paints, also any cheap, obscure paint brands. By the same token, exorbitantly priced paints - such as those made with exotic pigments like lapis lazuli - aren't likely to find their way into my paintbox, either. 

Below is a diagram of the colors I use for plein air painting.

1. Titanium white, made with safflower or walnut oil - not linseed oil. I like linseed oil in all colors except white because it yellows white in a relatively short time.
2. Cadmium lemon yellow. A slightly greenish yellow.
3. Cadmium yellow, cad. yellow medium, or cad. yellow deep. A more orangey yellow.
4. Cadmium red, or medium, or deep. A red on the yellowish side.
5. Permanent alizarin crimson, or quinacridone red, or another apropriate quinacridone. Dark, semi-transparent, and on the purplish side.
6. Cobalt blue. It's about as blue as paint pigments get, I think. I used to use cerulean blue, but found I can do everything with cobalt that I used to do with more expensive, but less strong cerulean. Cobalt blue is expensive enough.
7. Ultramarine blue. Dark, semi-transparent, and a touch violet.
8. Viridian green. A dark, cool green. Not a primary color, as oil paints go, but very useful.
9. Mixed dark purple. This is what I usually use for "black", or rather instead of black. It's a mix of alizarin and ultramarine, plus a touch of yellow to tone it down a little. This color can be made more blue or red as needed.

Other colors I occasionally add to the palette are:

• Ivory black. Mixed with yellow makes a wonderful earthy green like that found in high desert junipers.
• Yellow ochre. A good color for things like winter marsh grasses.

Colors I no longer allow on my palette: 

• Anything that starts with thalo. Thalo blue and thalo green are good strong colors. Overpowering, in fact. I've been unable to always control them. Thalo colors tend to take over any painting I've ever tried with them. Thalos also take over my hands, clothes, and anything I touch or walk on. The only way I've been able to control thalos is to tone them down with so much complementary color that I spend more time mixing paint than I do painting. But thalo colors are clear, strong, permanent, and inexpensive, so if you can learn how to use them successfully, more power to you!
• Any color with the term "hue" in it. Honestly, I won't rule out hues entirely, They can sometimes be convenient. But hues are just mixes. Generally, a painter should be able to easily mix whatever's needed.

.....

All this, of course, is subject to change.

Last of Autumn 2014

5" x 7" Oil on Panel

This is a little plein air painting done one late afternoon a week or so ago. The view is looking across a field to some bright yellow cottonwoods and grey green russian olive trees. Maple mountain is in the background.

Quercus Gambelii

8" x 10" Oil on Panel

Quercus gambelii, otherwise known as Gambel oak - or more simply, scrub oak - is a common shrubby tree found on mountain slopes and in canyons of the Wasatch Mountains. It typically grows in bunches and thickets which can be very difficult for a hiker to pass through. Where Gambel oak grows in small bunches or singly, it's rugged, deserty forms can be as fascinating as those of juniper or cliffrose. Pictured above is a painting I made earlier this year of a Gambel oak I came across while scrambling around on the slopes of the Wasatch Mountains not far from where I live.

This next photo shows how the painting gear had to be set up to paint that tree. I'm glad the lump of limestone was sticking up there. It provided the means of leveling the gear without being too low.

The day started out with very blue skies, but clouds moved in as the day progressed. Sometimes I'll paint the clouds in when that happens, but this time I kept the blue sky.

The last photo shows the painting still in the pochade box.

Major Mohawk

Pastel and charcoal on gray paper.

This is an old sketch, done from life. It has some drawing problems, but her hair really was like that. I wonder how she got in and out of a car? What did she do in a stiff crosswind? If she rode a longboard, could she use that mohawk like a sail?

This was a really fun drawing to do. I think the model was a student at one of the local universities, but I can't remember which one. She also attended the drawing sessions for a while. Her hair put on such a spectacular show for us only once, and that was the day she modeled for the session.

Also, this is the only even remotely Halloween-themed image I have to post right now. Happy Halloween, if you're into that sort of thing!

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

Sugarhouse Park

12" x 16" Oil on Panel

A view of the Wasatch Mountains from Sugarhouse Park in Salt Lake Valley.

There were a lot of interesting things going on in Sugarhouse Park last week as I painted this. It's a very busy park. I set up at the top of a rise overlooking the big field depicted in the lower part of the painting. At different times during the day there was a game of "ultimate frisbee", a lacrosse game, or people just tossing a frisbee to one another in that field. Others, walking their dogs, tossed balls for their dogs to chase. Many people simply strolled, enjoying a nice day in the park. Up where I was, some laid back souls relaxed on blankets or even in hammocks. Other more active types walked, jogged, bicycled or longboarded on the park trail.

A large pond a couple hundred yards to the right of where I was set up is where the most curious things were happening. A large crowd was assembled at one end of the pond to watch a few interesting characters wearing funny costumes paddling around on the pond in giant carved-out pumpkins. I didn't know anyone did that sort of thing. 

As I painted, someone strung a sturdy line between two trees just to my right, and several people took turns practicing balancing on it. Off to my left someone was flying a radio controlled model airplane. He flew the RC plane, which had a four-foot wingspan, for several minutes before accidentally crashing it into a tree, where it then crashed to the ground - twenty feet away from me!

Of course, many people stopped to visit with me as I painted. A few even returned a number of times to see the painting's progress during their visit to the park. One person remarked,

"This looks just like one of those how-to videos on YouTube!"