Art Journal

Bidahochi is the name for the geologic layer of white stone that sits above the red rock of the Chinle formation in northern Arizona. Looking out from the cliffs at the northern end of Petrified Forest National Park you can see the red underlayer of the chinle formation topped off with the white rock of the Bidahochi here and there where it has not worn away. There's about a 210 million year gap in age between the two formations, with nothing in between. Interesting. Where did the other 200 million years of sediment go?  Anyway, the view at sunset is wonderful and that is what I tried to paint here. I did several plein air paintings there last fall, but none really came out the way I wanted. Here's a recent studio version.

Bidahochi  Sunset, 8 x 16

A photo of the scene- white topped rocks are Bidahochi formation

This painting is from another trip up to the mountains. I wanted to go back to Beaver Reservoir which has some good views of some of the mountain  peaks and see what I could paint. Sawtooth Mountain is one of the mountains you can see. It turned out that the day, which looked good to begin with, started getting stormier as the hours went by. By the time I was finishing up it had darkened considerably and was starting to rain. Just in time to leave.  Soon it was raining harder with streams running down the sides of the dirt road.  By the time I hit the highway snow was pelting down among the rain. It didn't last long and of course the snow flakes all melted as they hit. But this is typical Colorado - it  can snow any day of the year, even if only a little bit.

Storm Coming, 9 x 12

My painting, Playground Lockdown, 8 x 10,  (sold) just received the Best of Show Award at the Taos Plein Air Online Show. Winners were announced on Sunday. The show which is available for online viewing is at the E. L. Blumenschein Museum in Taos. (http://taoshistoricmuseums.org/. Due to Covid the show, usually a plein air event, became an online event. I was so excited to win this, very unexpected.

I painted this in my car at the height of the pandemic lockdown, sitting in the parking lot of the park, looking towards the empty ballfields and the playground taped off with caution tape one late afternoon.

This is a scene inspired by a trip back from Denver one evening in January. It was getting late and clouds were filling in causing that hazy dark sky so commonly seen in winter with just a bit of light coming through from the sunset. The snow had nestled in the ruts of the plowed field catching the light from the low sun. I struggled with this one, painting the sky over at least three times, changing other stuff until I sort of got it like I wanted it - you never get it exactly like you want it, but you try. I am happy with the final version.

Fields at Twilight, 16 x 20

Here is a studio painting of Kachina Point in Petrified Forest National Park. ( See link for more photos of the scenery.)  I originally did a plein air painting of this scene at the crack of dawn last fall during my Artist Residence but always wanted to redo the painting. I wanted it to look big and vast like it looks when you are there. So recently I did this larger studio painting with some compositional changes.

Kachina Sunrise, 20 x 10

Here's the original plein air, Kachina Dawn, 11 x 14

The scene at the time:

One one of the Estes Park paint out trips our location had a great view of Longs Peak in the distance but I decided to paint the opposite direction, looking at a pair of ponderosa pines set up on a rocky ridge above me, silhouetted against the sky.  it was a beautiful day and all but I didn't find the lighting or the weather around the mountain all that inspiring to paint but making this one work was interesting.

Ponderosas, 12 x 9, plein air

Thursday's Boulder PAAC group paintout was at McIntosh Lake. I went to the eastern-most edge near the transformer station to paint as I was hoping to see a few trees and some natural area  rather than the lawn/park area. This was a scene painting westward over the lake. Red wing blackbirds kept perching in my subject tree. I put a few in the painting.  Spring is short here in Colorado. It's late in coming and gone soon. Already the slopes of the foothills are starting to brown down.

Redwings at home, 9 x 12

Okay - so here's the painting of a mostly green scene done at Twin Lakes that I did with the same limited palette, ult. B, aliz. perm., naples Y, white, which I feel did not work that well with my choice of palette. Although it works very well for a scene with red rocks and neutral colors, not so much for greens.

 The greens are limited in range, and a different blue and definitely a different yellow would have given me a lot more options. Maybe cobalt blue and cadmium lemon or light for the yellow. Definitely a different yellow would have helped. I might try it again using different colors.

Trees over the water, 12 x 9

I made a return  trip to the beaver ponds again. It was fun painting there the first time. This time I set up farther downstream under a large overhanging ponderosa tree (mercifully shady but not bug-less) and set up my composition to paint some chewed off trees in the pond. The lighting was interesting since I had golden light hitting the water from the right where it streamed through gaps in the trees, and the overhead light from the blue sky on the left reflecting on the water shaded from the direct light. I once again used the limited palette of ult.B, aliz. perm., and naples Y, plus white.  I found this palette so far has given me some interesting color combinations. But I found out that it doesn't work too well if the scene has a lot of green in it. The greens that you can make are very subdued. But more on that in a later post.

Beaver Ponds 2, 9 x 12

The first paintout with the Estes Park PAAC group was held on June 3 in Lyons near the St. Vrain River. The location was on private property belonging to a friend of the organizer, on farm land near the river. The area is between several large sandstone mesas and a place that was ravaged by the great floods of 2013. The river to changed course,  leaving behind a lot of debris and rock, and wiping out some fields and orchards that previously were there. I decided to paint the river which had some large sandstone blocks along its bank.  It was a very nice morning. I had time to do a second half-hour painting of the nearby woods.

Sandstone Stairway, 9 x 12. Ult B, aliz crim., naples Y, white. (still trying out that limited palette)

Undercover, 8 x 10, the second painting (not a limited palette)