"As Long As You Can Start…"

Out looking for something to paint can be a frustrating thing. You know you are going to invest two or three hours so you want to find something to paint that assures your time will be well spent. I should know the the folly of that attitude by now. After wasting an hour driving & walking around in Charleston, Utah searching for a paint-worthy subject, I finally just got out of my car, lugged my traps out into a field and started painting. The house didn't really excite me but I decided to give it a shot. I took Hemingway to heart: "As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come." He was right. I began to see the quality of the mid morning light as a worthy subject.

Therapy

Robert Redford once said, "Everyone in Hollywood has their therapists. I have Utah!" 

Bob has it right. I've been spending time in Utah every summer for the last 50+ years of my life. I went to school at BYU in Utah. My parents both grew up in Park City, Utah. It is a glorious place. One of the fringe benefits of marrying my wife is their family cabin just behind Redford's Sundance Resort.

This photo shows an example of the therapy that Redford spoke of:

(Our cabin is a couple hundred yards behind me as I take this photo.)

Most years I don't spend very much time painting while there and spend time with my family. But since I have that Sonoma Plein Air thing coming, I decided I would try to paint a few pictures.

A Road In Utah

I spent a week up in Utah with my family at the first of July. Here is one of the paintings I did. I'll write and show more about it soon.

Danielle

I have done a few portraits of Danielle over the years. She is a family friend and a beautiful model. This one is still being worked on.

Sketches in Higley

Started painting at 5 AM this morning and painted for about an hour and a half. These are the results. Each painting is about 3x5 & took about 20 - 30 minutes.

Fast Color Sketches

I've been trying to get out every morning and do a painting. It's not been easy as I am still in the final stages of finishing the illustrations for "The Tomb Robbers And King Tut" (the book I am illustrating for Viking Books). I often find myself in the position of having a finite segment of time with an infinite amount of things I would like to paint and wanting to make the best use of my time and not waste it on a lousy painting. I often thereby paralyze myself with indecision. Then I was looking through Kevin Macpherson's book and saw this little 3 x 5 color sketch he did. It inspired me. So the last few days I have been going out and doing 2 - 4 little color sketches/notes in about an hour. They are 4 x 5 inches. I am using a #6 bright for a brush, which is fairly large for that size of painting. This of course speeds up the process and forces me to really simplify.

Monday I went out to the Salt River basin just NE of Mesa. I arrived early and was all set up by 5:30 when the sun was beginning to peak over the horizon. This was my first painting. It had the moon getting ready to set.

I then drove down the road a ways where Red mountain was getting the early warm rays of the sun.

Turning about 90˚ to the right was this view of the layers of mountains.

Utah