Painting a Series

Over the last year I have painted a lot of paintings and it dawned on me that I was painting things all over the map. I know I have painted some of these paintings just because they were subjects I liked and wanted to challenge myself to paint. I do have a several paintings of the ocean, done at different times, and of mountains, or rivers, but I really didn't have a series of paintings from any one place, or with any one theme.  I had entered three very different pieces in a Masterpiece Medley Show at the Blue Line Gallery. I was very fortunate to have secured a spot as one of ten artists to show their works in the Vista Gallery next month. Perhaps for this show it will be good to show very different kinds of scenes, but perhaps for the next show, I will enter several with the same theme.

Flash Flood!

The Pastel Society of the West Coast is calling for entries for a show in May June of this year at the Haggin Museum in Stockton. I thought for this years show that I would go with entries from one locale, and I chose a series of paintings on the Southwest. I have been enjoying a number of artists paintings in Southwest Magazine and perhaps that is what sparked my desire to do a series on the Southwest. I finished one a couple of months ago, a 12" X 16" pastel of a flash flood in the desert that would be a good entry. It was a scene I witnessed when I was 21 years old and driving across the desert in north eastern Arizona, on my way to Monument Valley.  The skies in the distance were a dark purplish black, and one could see the lightning flash and hear the thunder rumbling even though it was a long way away.  As I was crossing a wash, I saw water coming down in a big wave, so I pulled over to get a picture. I missed the initial wall of water, but did get a shot shortly after that I used as a reference for this painting.

Morning Sun on Monument Valley

Last month I completed a second painting that was a larger format, 18" X 24" I have called "Morning Sun in Monument Valley" that should also be a good entry for the PSWC show. This painting is from reference photos I took when my brother and I were exploring Monument Valley Tribal Park in my brothers old Triumph convertible sports car. We had camped there under the stars, and got to drive far into the interior of the valley on the dirt roads.  Today tourists must take a tour on one of the Tribal touring buses to venture into the park. That takes away the ability to stop whenever one wants to to take photographs. I am fortunate to have over 100 that I took on slide film that still have their bright colors. 

I feel good about these paintings, and thought I would also paint one of the beautiful buttes one can see from the old Trading Post, near the park entrance. These buttes are magnificent, and one feels awed by their size and colors. For this painting I thought I would do my first large format pastel, a 24" X 36" painting on a sheet of Wallis Belgium Mist that I had purchased. I recently tried the Wallis paper, and really like this texture to work on with pastels because it has a lot of tooth.  I drew the scene I wanted to paint on the paper in charcoal so I would have a guide to follow for laying my under painting colors. I used a lot of purple for this one because it will work so well with the reds and browns one sees everywhere.    

I have included the initial sketch so you can see the scene that I wanted to paint. I can tell you right now, it is very daunting to paint a pastel painting this large for the first time, but it is also very exciting. I have to tell you about the scene, and why I wan to paint it. While the memory is from over forty years ago, the moment comes back to me like magic when I look at some of my slides that I took that evening.   The scene I want to capture is at sundown, when the sun has dropped below the canyon rim but is still lighting the clouds in the sky with soft pastel colors of pink and mauve. There are big thunderheads everywhere, and the thunder is rolling and echoing through the valley and bouncing off the canyon walls and the buttes. Periodically there have been torrential rains and so the colors in the valley are so bright and vibrant. The sweet smell of fresh rain and wet earth is in the air. The colors are overwhelmingly bright now in the soft evening air. There are no shadows because the sun is hidden behind the canyon, but its light is shining brightly in the clouds and reflecting down on the land below. One can see for miles, there is no haze only more thunderheads many miles away. The landscape looks like a painters palette of colors all running together. I hope that you can visualize this scene. On my next blog, you will see be able to view the completed painting and learn all about my journey to capture this marvelous homeland of the Navajo Indians.