Utah County Plein Air Show

In a year marked by such unpleasantries as a pandemic, recession, earthquake, riots, upcoming elections, and so forth, so many of the plein air competitions, like so many things, have been canceled. But not the Utah County Plein Air Show!

Two years ago was the first year for the Utah County Plein Air Show, and I was part of that, but last year I didn't participate. This year, however, even though I was one of the last to get my panels stamped for the competition, I really did jump at the chance to enter into the event.

There was some confusion when I went to turn in my three finished entries for the show. A Utah County Art Board email said turn in for paintings was June 27 by 11:00 AM. I hadn't checked on the email but was going by what was printed on a form the art board handed out when I registered for the competition, which stated turn in time was 12 NOON. I arrived at the venue on the 27th at around 11:30 thinking I still had time. I was met in the parking lot by a board member who was leaving. She informed me the deadline was 11 AM and that everyone had already left! Luckily I had the form with me and, perhaps with a little excitement, showed her the form and pointed out the 12 Noon deadline stated on the form. The board member agreed and called someone to come open the venue again so I could enter my paintings. The paintings were finally entered into the show.

Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph my paintings before turning them in, so I had to go back later and get these three poorly done photos after the show opened. Hopefully they'll still give you a good enough idea of how the paintings look. The first painting (shown above) was made in the Spanish Fork River Bottoms along a bike trail there. The next painting was made near the pass between Hobble Creek Canyon and Diamond Fork Canyon. Upon reaching the pass, I turned onto a dirt track that ran along a ridge top. I followed the track for a couple miles before picking this spot to paint.

A day or two later I returned to the pass and set up by a large meadow that contained some corrals. There I made the last painting, shown here with a little extra blue added on one side by the show's judge:

Come see the exhibit! The show will be up until August 29th. There's plenty of paintings by several  painters to see. It's located at the Health and Justice Building at 151 S. University Ave, Provo, Utah. Check ahead for hours.

A Brunette and a Redhead

8" x 6" Oil on Panel

Two more recent portrait sketches from live models. Both were painted alla prima in oil in two and a half to three hours each at the weekly portrait sessions. The first one was painted with my usual "Zorn (ish)" palette of yellow ochre, cadmium red, ivory black, and titanium white.

8" x 6" Oil on Panel

For the second painting, I did something very different, at least for me. I usually keep my oil color choices for portraits much simpler than when I work in pastel. This time the model wore a turquoise colored blouse, and I really didn't want to miss getting the color contrast between her orange hair and the blouse. So I put blue on my palette. Not only one, but two different blues. The palette for the second painting was cadmium yellow, cadmium red, sevres blue, ultramarine blue, ivory black and titanium white. Sevres blue is an unusual color for me, and I only have it in the particular pochade box I used that evening. There are other blues which also would have served the purpose, but this one worked fine. Who knows, I may become more adventurous on portrait night and start putting more colors on my palette!

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

Phthaloranosaurus Rex, or How to paint with Phthalo Green

9" x 12" Oil on Panel

Well meaning people can sometimes cause problems.

A friend of mine owned some oil paints from a while ago when he had an interest in painting. Apparently, the muse wandered away from him years ago, and he no longer had interest in, nor use for the paints. He knows I oil paint, so he just dropped those waif-like paints off at my place. Now, there were among those paints some colors I use, like white, black, yellow ochre, and a couple cadmiums. There were a few colors I don't normally use, but can find a place for, such as thio violet. There were a few I don't know what to do with (Dioxazine purple - what the heck?) But red flags went up when I saw those two trouble-making colors, phthalo green and phthalo blue.

I've tried phthalocyanine (phthalo) paints before, years ago. They're inexpensive, lightfast, and strong colors. But "strong" might not be the right word for them. More like obnoxious, overbearing, overpowering, even totalitarian. They can overrun and conquer your entire painting, giving an acidic blue-green cast to the entire work. I've spent a lot of time knocking back the strength of phthalos to get them to the earth tones typical of landscapes instead of the overly assertive colors phthalos want to be. After trying phthalo green and phthalo blue once, I've replaced them with viridian green and cobalt blue.

But now, here they were again. Phthalos. Try saying that out loud without spitting all over your computer screen. I didn't want them. I wanted to throw them away. I thought about taking the caps off the paint tubes and tossing them out the car window as I sped down a busy highway. Then later I might go back to see what color the highway had become. But no, I decided to give those two annoyingly brilliant colors one more try.

A palette which includes phthalos needs strong checks and balances, and I already had a good counter color - cadmium red. Not only is red the complementary color to green, but cadmium red is a dirty mixer, and can even be useful in toning down phthalo blue. In the painting shown at the top of this post, the sky was painted with phthalo blue and titanium white, toned down with cadmium red, ultramarine blue, and maybe touches of a few other colors. The trees in the painting were done using phthalo green, with cadmium red - a lot of it - and cadmium yellow to tone down and warm up the greens. A mix of thio violet* and ultramarine blue, with a little yellow, were added to phthalo green for the darkest parts of the trees. Again, small amounts of other colors made their way into the painting's trees, but I don't remember all the details.

I was happy with how phthalo green and phthalo blue worked in this painting. A few more examples of paintings I've made using phthalo colors can be seen in this post and this post. I think I'll keep those two tubes of paint and use them. At least until they're done - then I'll happily go back to viridian and cobalt!

As I drove away from my painting spot, I saw in another direction a huge plume of smoke from a wildfire in the mountains. It kind of reminded me of what can happen to a painting if you don't keep your phthalocyanine under control!

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*Instead of alizarin crimson or quinacridone red.