MARIAH

MARIAH, 9X12 oil on canvas ©2010

Greetings!
I will be posting a 30X40 painting in the next day or so, but in the mean time, I did a small landscape painting for the "Salute to Summer" show opening in June at the Jackson Wyoming Trailside Gallery. I love how cloud cover can quickly come in and cover the peaks of mountains. It's what happened the last time I visited the Tetons in Wyoming. In the distance you could see that it was clearing and wouldn't be long till the sun was back. It was a very windy day, so I named it the name of the wind, the same as the old song of the same name. Total painting time, 3 1/2 hours.

When I first started painting landscapes, it would take me days to produce one of these. As usual, I was getting lost in the details, instead of concentrating on the light effect, which is the essence of so many successful landscapes. I would get lost in painting the pine trees, being a slave to my reference, instead of using my photos as a jumping off point. Now I paint my areas in as general shapes, puzzle pieces which fit into each other, leaving the details until the effect was there already. Decide wher your focal point is and let the other areas in your painting play seconds to it. I wanted the focal point of this piece to be the area highlighted in detail #3 below. It has the areas of biggest contrast, and most detail. Everything else should support it, not compete with it. Don't kill a painting with extraneous details!

I get a lot of positive feedback on the close up details I post. So, here are some close ups of some of the more interesting passages.....

Detail 1




Detail 2



Detail 3

Hope you find this post helpful and interesting. Thanks for checking in!! --Steve

First String Daily Demo, Day 5

Hi Everybody,
Today is "Paint a Cowboy" day. Time to get the rest of the canvas covered. That means painting in the shirt, jeans, boot and hands.


The shirt is in as well as the hands and part of the jeans. Like in the rest of the photo, I've simplified the folds in the shirt. The things I'm concentrating on for the shirt is getting the proper values in the right places. And getting in the light effect. This means adding colors that the photos don't usually contain. As you probably know, photos are great for giving us details that (my mind at least) we have a hard time retaining, or an even harder time making up. And though, the computer monitor is better at getting the colors as close to the original as we can, it still is only as good as you can tweak it. And you can only tweak it as good as you understand what happens with light. It's why I paint on location whenever I can. Nothing is better at teaching you the laws of light. I've never really mentioned another reason to paint outside. Willingness to publicly fail. I find that it's a very humbling experience to paint on location. Nothing, and I mean Nothing, draws people to you like setting up a tripod and paint box. People who would normally never dream of talking to perfect strangers, feel completely comfortable walking up to an artist and starting up a conversation. I've found that the law of crappy attraction applies, at least for me, while I'm painting out. This means that people will be attracted to your easel only when you are struggling with a painting, and come up at the worst time. People never seem to even see me when I'm working on a painting that's going well. That will keep anyone's ego waaaay down. So, back to the painting at hand.... now I'm working on painting in the light effect.





Here's a detailed view of the shirt which has a good representation of the warms and cools in both the light and shadow areas. Since the light areas have a warm light source, most of the lights are warm.... yellows, oranges and such. But it's important to put in some grays and blues here and there to make the effect more believable. I keep the warms an cools close in value and the human eye accepts the temp changes. Lots of reflected light in the shadow areas, especially where the reflected light is bouncing off the shirt itself.


The jeans go in next. The thing I spent the most time doing here is painting the top of the jeans more blue, and transitioning the pant leg to have more dust down at the bottom. So it ends up being warmer down at the boot. Two reasons I'm doing this, even though the reference doesn't have this. It makes the scene more believable, since the cowboy should have more dust on his pants down by his boots, since there is so much blowing dust. And it keeps him from looking like he's been pasted into the scene. Also is doesn't draw your eye down to the foot, and keeps it at the focal point, where it belongs.

The shadow areas have a nice warm reflected light bouncing onto the leg and really helps to turn the edge. I'm also keeping the edges softer in these areas. This also turns the edge and keeps your eye moving.



Here's the complete figure painted in. The canvas now is completely covered.




The painting at the end of day 5. I forgot to mention that I also went back into the foreground dirt and added a nice thick area of paint to bring more excitement to the painting. The thicker areas of paint are usually the first things people see when they look at a painting. But that's usually one of the last things I paint.







Only now that the entire canvas has paint covering it, can I begin the process of refinement. Now I can begin to adjust and balance the values which are too weak or strong, warm or cool, hard or soft edges. This is always my favorite part of a painting. This will make or break it's success.




I darken the shadow area of the horse's breast and bring it's value up to where it belongs. I also start to work on the lead ropes, softening edges and refining lights and darks. In the next couple of days I will be concentrating on adjusting any of these trouble areas. Also it's time to start perfecting the anatomy of the musculature of the horses legs and hooves. Finding the balance between detail and simplification. I will also be concentrating on getting the fence and gate finished, as well as adding the background details. Lots to do, but it really is the fun part.

Now I wait for a couple of days till the surface of the thicker paint dries. Right now it's in that weird tacky stage and can't be worked on till the entire surface dries. Then I'll bring the paint back to it's true colors by coating the surface, but more on that in the next installment. Needing to let the painting dry is why I work on several paintings at once. See you in a few days...

First String Daily Demo, Day 4

Hi Everybody,
Time to move onto the dogs and main figure. I don't always wait till the end to do the main figure, but it just naturally flowed that way on this painting. The rest of the figures will have everything to do with how I paint the cowboy. Painting the others first will keep me from painting him too tightly. Yep, you can probably see a theme developing here, with me always talking about keeping it loose. That's because my tendency is to go directly into painting the details and getting lost in the weeds. By keeping it loose and waiting till the end to selectively add the details, I'm able to make adjustments and paint a more artistic picture. One that focuses your eye to the exact spot on which I wish it to land.



First Dog laid in. Not the perfect face or head, but close enough for now. I will come back and tweak it later, but all the info is there and I can move on to the next dog.





Second border collie laid in. It was very important to me that the back of it's body was obscured by a veil if drifting dust. Right now it's purely about getting to dog to sit back and be one of the last figures you see.



I'm happier with this guy's face and I won't have to do much fiddling with it. Once you get it right leave it alone. Remember, there ain't no undo button like there is on the computer. I've lost more good painting by messing with a passage than anything else. If it's right, leave it alone!




Here it is with the dogs in place. I still have a couple of hours, so I go ahead and start on the head of the cowboy.



Keep your shadow areas separate from your light areas. Remember to add your reflected light, but don't let it compete with the light side. You'll notice that I began to put in the shirt, but I keep the lay in in the shadows, always comparing this shadow value to the surrounding areas, like the face and the horse which borders his sleeve.


Here's a close up detail of the face. Nothing is labored over. Be clean in your value changes and remember that the reflected light which is bouncing off the underside of his chin is a version of what is causing it, in this case, his light purple/ blue shirt. It might look a bit funny now, but will be right when I paint in the light side of his shirt.

See you tomorrow!

First String Daily Painting Demo, Day 2+3

Hi Everybody, day 2 begins and I'm ready to start in on the horses. The first horse I will do is the white one on the far right side. For some reason, I had a senior moment and did not photograph the end of the first day with the two horses in on the right side, so just know that at the end of the second day, I had worked in the red metal swinging gate on the right side and two horses on the right side.



Here's what the first horse looked like when it was laid in. At this point, all the values were pretty close to what I wanted them to be. It's really important to me to get the reflected light bouncing from the ground onto it's undercarriage. Almost everything you paint will have reflected light. The stronger the light source, the stronger the reflected light. Remember your secondary light is light that's just what its sounds like, light that's being reflected from another object onto your subject's shadowed area. It's never as light as the directly lit area. It needs to read like it's still in the shadows, so be careful with your values here.




Closeup view of the first horse. Keep it simple. Don't put in every detail there is. Be selective, strive for accuracy of shapes, value, and color temp. You can always make adjustments later, but be as accurate as you can without putting in too much detail. Details don't make a successful painting! Mood, story, values, composition and edges do! For me, the painters who are most successful are the ones able to paint accurately, yet with a looseness. I love paintings where it looked like the painter had a good time painting it.

Another thing about this stage is: I know I'm going to be obscuring the hooves and lower legs of the horses with dust, so I don't waste a lot of time putting in details which will just be obscured later. I know I will be dry brushing the dust over the hoofs, coronets and pasterns because it has a very believable look to it when it's done this way.




The head and neck of the second horse after the lay in. Again, accuracy of shape, value and temps. One of the things that helps make the horse more believable (or any object, really), is making sure to put in warms and cools. You can see on the forehead and nose that I put in purple grays along with the yellows and oranges.

Here's a more detailed view of what I'm talking about. You can see how the warms and cools work together here to make a believable painting. It also shows how very little detail was painted in. No individual hairs were needed to convey the idea that he has a mane.




Here's where I left it at at the end of day three. All three of the horses are laid in. The faces, heads and necks have the most detail. Saddles and tack have less and the legs/hooves have the least, but more than they will have when the painting will be finished.

Thanks for looking! Steve

'FIRST STRING" DAILY PAINTING DEMO

Hi Everybody,
I'm now settled into my new studio and have begun painting again. For this entry, I thought I would post another painting demo. It's been quite a while since I did a demo, and I feel like it's time. This time around the painting is called "First String" I'll take you from the initial concept pencil and include as much of my thought process as I can include without putting you to sleep.





Here is the pencil I did to work out any kinks, and save me time on the easel. If I don't work out all the holes I have in my reference, I can spend a lot of time repainting areas, so, for me, it's time well spent up front. The main image of the horses and cowboy is from some reference I took at the Tucson Rodeo in February. The lighting was less than I deal and I had an idea to add some backlit dust to knock back the background and help with the focal point. The dogs were added to help with the concept and to highlight the partnership between cowboys, horses, and dogs. Besides, I like painting dogs. Hey, it's a weakness. The middle ground with the gate, fence and treelined background were invented using separate reference photos. Just enough of a background to give it a general place. It's not that important to the painting, so I don't overdo it with detail. When I put them all together, I find out if the drawing has enough merit to carry it into a painting. I originally was going to do this painting 18X24", but I decided that it would look better and have more impact at a larger size. So, the finished painting will be done at 24X30".

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Once I'm happy with the pencil, I transfer the image to the toned canvas. I tone all my canvases using a color I think will work if I let little areas unpainted and poking through. For this painting, since it will be infused with dust, I used a thin wash of yellow ochre. When I do plein air work I usually use a thin wash of Cadmium Orange. It just depends on the painting.





This is a close-up of the very beginning of the painting process. I included this photo to show you how thin the paint is at this point. If you look at the paint that's being loosely applied, you can still faintly see the drawing through the wash. The paint isn't like watercolor wash, it's thicker than that, but still thin enough to work over. This is important to me since I will be working over it while it's still wet.





My painting set up is pretty simple. The painting is on my easel. I've mounted my 30" display monitor on a wall swing arm mount. This allows me to work horizontally, or rotate my monitor 90º and view it vertically, which makes for a much larger viewing area if the piece I'm working on is in portrait mode. On my monitor you can see my original photo, to which I've added the dogs in Photoshop. Also, I've got a photo of western fencing I'm using as generic reference. The lighting isn't right, but it lets me see the details of how it's constructed. And, I keep my sketch taped to the wall, to refer to when I need to see how I worked things out, just in case.




I'm only at the start of the lay in, but I wanted to show how simply it begins. Right now all I'm concerned with is getting the value relationships close. This block in goes pretty quickly, since I am not putting in any detail. In fact, I don't always put in the lightest lights or darkest darks. I don't know what needs to be detailed now, and if I put them in, I run the risk of making it too busy. The simpler the start the better. I can always add more later, but it's harder to take it out.





Here is where I ended up at the end of the first day. Simple shapes, simple values and most of my time was spent thinking about supporting the figures once they started to go in. The dust cloud behind my figures is going in well and I think will highlight the focal point and add the dramatic lighting I want. I'm not just painting the reference photo exactly like it is, I'm adding a light effect to make it a painting and have it create a mood. This painting will be all about attitude and confidence. Almost like gladiators walking into the coliseum, ready to do battle.

Round 2 will come tomorrow....

Blogger confessional...

Hotcakes and Syrup, 12X16, oil on linen panel ©2010

Forgive me painters, for I have sinned, it's been one month since my last post.

OK OK, I've never been accused of great time management, and I don't think anyone ever will. I'm closing on the sale of our Minnesota house next week (yay, it sold), and the movers come at the end of the week to load everything into a big truck to take it to Arizona. So, needless to say, I've been busy packing and showing the house and selling our extra "stuff". But I did want to do a quick post of a painting I just finished for the Catholic Charities fundraiser "Men Who Cook" coming up in April. I did this painting as a donation for them to auction off. Since the fundraiser has a food theme, I thought it would be fun to do a big stack of steaming blueberry pancakes being doused with maple syrup. A little looser in style than I usually work, I like it that way. Since I was an illustrator for a package design firm, I've illustrated lots of food over the years (raspberries are my least favorite food to do), and I'm comfortable doing it. So this was a natural fit for me and I had a blast doing something different from what I have been doing lately.

Thanks for looking, Steve

New direction for a study

Autumn's First Kiss, 9X12 oil on linen panel

Now that the blanket has covered us here in Minnesota with all the subtlety of a freight train slamming into the side of a mountain, I am here painting in the studio much more. It's a good time to review the plein air studies I did last year, and see if there are any of them from which I might like to work.

Here is a painting that I did by taking one of my plein air studies and painting over it. The original study, titled "Wildflower Hill", had many things about it that I liked. It was a success in my mind, as far as it went, which wasn't far enough. It was a painting which needed more. Here it is as I posted it last summer.

Wildflower Hill, 9X12 oil on painting panel

And though I liked it, I felt that it could be a much better painting with a few simple changes. As I saw it, there were two things to be addressed. The first was the depth of the composition. As I stood on site and did this painting, this is the way the actual landscape was. But when I took a more critical look at it, I wasn't comfortable with the fact that the foreground, middleground and background were so layered and separate. There was nothing leading your eye around the painting. One of the challenges we face as plein air painters is to take what nature gives us and translate it into a two dimensional work of art. One which leads us around the composition in a logical and pleasing manner. Most of the time, things need to be deconstructed and rearranged to get a successful painting. In the original, I really was trying to translate into paint, something as challenging (at least it's challenging to me) as a field of wildflowers, without getting drawn into the trap of painting individual flowers, instead of general shapes and correct values and edges. But what was missing were the elements which broke up the strong line of the hillside and lead you back into the trees. It was missing the depth. So, while repainting, I paid attention to breaking the line of the hillside by adding bushes which lead your eyes from foreground to background and back again. I also added a small post fence to the hilltop to help lead you around the painting. The smaller tree on the right side of the painting was pulled forward and does a nice job of breaking up the diagonal of the hill, and keeps your eye from sliding off the edge. It's job is also to add to the three dimensionality of the landscape. It's your invitation to step into the next layer. It keeps things from being flat.

I also reworked the patches of wild flowers into shapes which were of unequal size and shape, and into a more pleasing pattern. And was careful to paint the patch just under the large tree brighter than the rest. In this way, I help to establish my focal point of the large tree.

The second thing I wanted to do differently, was to paint it with more style. I want the person looking at the painting to know I had fun painting it. So I painted this one with a looser hand and more style. So here are a few detail photos to show some of the brushwork.

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Thanks for looking, Steve

There's One in Every Bunch

Hi All,
I've been busy in the studio working on some new medium sized paintings for the show deadlines coming up, as well as the spring gallery season. The Oil Painters of America National Show deadline is fast approaching. This painting was to be my entry, but paintings need to be available for sale in that show. I am blessed to have some wonderful collectors, and when I was approached by one who wanted to add it to their collection, I wasn't about the say no. So, I'm working on another piece for that show. However, I wanted to post this painting and share some of my thoughts and processes on how I painted it.

There's One In Every Bunch, 24X30, oil on linen

Firstly, let's talk about paintings and photo reference. I have lots and lots if ideas rolling around in my head for paintings I would like to do. Sometimes the ideas for the painting comes first and I take my reference to fit the idea I have. Sometimes I get an idea for a painting from the reference I've taken and fit the painting together from that. Sometimes I even get a name for a painting and develop the painting to fit the name. For this painting I had the idea and name first. I had the reference I needed for the bolting steer and chasing cowboy, though they came from different photos. The thing I needed was the setting for the painting. I wasn't happy with anything I had for this piece and waited till I found the perfect scene. That happened when I went to Canyon de Chelly and along with Rusty Jones, stumbled into this wash. The layout and lighting was perfect. It didn't take long to put the scene together. I love the S curve of the composition, with the dust of trail taking you back into the gully to where it opens up to the basin in the background.

I always try to do some drawings for any areas in a painting that have changes that need to be worked out ahead of time. Honestly, taking a little time now can save you a whole lot of painting time later on. In this case, I had to add sleeves onto the shirt of the cowboy. I took the additional photos for the sleeves I needed and worked out any problems in this charcoal sketch. In this sketch I was considering adding a vest to the rider. In the end, I decided against it.

Horse and rider study

These pencils are done quickly and I don't labor over them. That way I don't spend a lot of time adding information I don't need to work out. It doesn't need to be photographic for me to use it, it's just a tool for gathering information. Drawing is fun, but in the end, it's about doing a painting, not drawing.

Once the painting information is gathered, I draw the image onto the canvas and paint. I start with large shapes and cover the canvas as quickly as I can while still being accurate with the values. I can't stress this enough. Color temps can be tweaked later and the details added last, but I try not to add these details until I'm happy with the values, composition and color temps. It's the things you notice first in a painting that you paint in last.

Cowboy detail

Detail

Dust detail #1

Dust detail #2

One additional note.... if you are painting from photos, do not be a slave to the colors or values which you see. You need to adjust these things to work together into a cohesive scene. Photography is a wonderful tool, but it's just a tool. Your photos will always disappoint you when you get back to the studio. Your darks will become black holes, and your highlights will almost always be too light. But if you do your homework and spend some of your time painting in the field, you will be able to trust yourself to make corrections and adjustments when you need to. I know for me, that the trip I took last year to paint in the Canyon, helped me to be able to paint the colors I knew to be there, not the colors my camera recorded. I can't stress this enough. Thanks for taking the time to look at my latest work. My next post will follow me as I work a painting from start to finish.

taker easy, Steve

Hell for Leather

Hell for Leather, 40X30, oil/linen

Hey there everybody,
since I've been unable to stand in front of my easel as of late, I decided to post a painting I did earlier this year, but never posted. I know there are lots of you who visit my blogspot, but have not made the jump over to visit my website. What??? Why the heck not? I don't post everything I do on my blog. Hey, I have to give you some reason to visit my website.

So, here's a larger studio painting I did of a wrangler I met in Colorado. We had come back from a trail ride and I asked if he would mind me taking some reference photos for a painting I had an idea for. Most of the paintings I had been doing were pretty static and I wanted to do something that showed a lot of action. So I had him make several passes at me with me shooting pictures just as fast as my camera would go This is where investing in a good digital camera really pays off. It only takes one rider photo, but it has to be the right photo for it to work. I did get a photo that worked for the horse and most of the rider. But there were some things that I had to change. First, he was wearing a short sleeve shirt ( and it was a washed out flesh type color). OK, yeah, technically I guess they do wear short sleeves.... but as a friend of mine says, 'no one wants to buy a painting of swayback horses or bow legged women. You can paint it that way, but that don't make it right'. So I took some extra photos of myself with my arms and hands in the position that looked best. When you do this, you've got to replicate the position of the sun. I'm gonna repeat that cause it's soooo important. Look at the location of the sun in the original photo you're looking to modify. Orient the sun to the same position as in the photo. You can take the best reference in the world to change something in an original photo, but if you don't make the lighting the same, it won't look right. And it doesn't matter how well you paint it. The eye knows. Damn the evil eye....

The second thing I didn't like about the original photo was the face of the wrangler. Oh, he was a good looking fella, but he had a habit of scrunching up his mouth, you know, curling it in. It just looked funny and I knew it would be a problem. So I went outside and set up my remote wireless shutter button and snapped pics of myself till I got the one that I felt would work (yes, that ugly mug is mine). Then I just put them all together. Simple, see?

I guess my whole point is that no matter how good your reference is, it can almost always be improved upon. I never paint something the way it is just because it's that way in my reference photos. If you do, you might as well just sign the photo. I'm always asking myself if I can improve on the scene. Is there something that's not right, how do I fix it. I take things an move them around. Edit. Add. Whatever I can do to tell the story I want to tell. If you care enough to do these things, it shows in your final work.

The whole point of this painting, beyond the action part of it, was to make him as large and in your face as I could. I played with the idea of actually cropping off part of his head, just to push the idea of meyhem and speed. But luckily, cooler heads prevailed. But I did exaggerate the tilt a bit. Not enough to look like he was going to fall off, but enough to help the composition. For the setting, I kept it pretty simple with minimal distractions. I put the rider on a dirt path going away from a small bunk house in the distance. I added the branches to help push him of the painting and give the impression of motion. You can see I also blurred the edges of the sunlit areas to really light him up as well as the horses legs and hooves. The flying dust was the finishing touch to make this rider go, "Hell for Leather".

Thanks for looking, Steve

Mexican Silver

Mexican Silver, 12X16, oil on linen panel

Hi Everyone,

Well, Ann and I spent the last three days traveling cross country in a car that was stuffed to the gills (including two cats!... who were great, btw). We arrived safe and sound in Arizona and have started the moving process. I'll be back in Minnesota next week to finish getting the house ready to put on the market. Then I'll be in Arizona permanently. The amount of time I can spend in front of the easel lately has been almost none, but I did manage to paint this still life. I almost never paint still lifes because I can't get into the traditional subject matter. Flowers, fruit and vases ain't something I can get into. It's just how I'm wired. But a pair of spurs with mexican silver, well, now your talkin'. I originally set these up to do a quick painting of them, you know, the "painting a day" kind that are so very popular now. But what I discovered was that, even though I could lay it all in quickly enough, I wasn't going to be happy with the spur rowels (the pointy wheels that are used to get the attention of the horse) when I painted them fast. They just looked sloppy. So I slowed down and took my time with them. I put a single light source on the scene and added some silver coins and wooden beads. The edges are loose in the areas where I want the eye to pass over. Since I wanted the spur wheel on the right to be the focal point, I made it the area of greatest contrast, as well as the hardest edges.

Thanks for looking, Steve

Canyon de Chelly paintout post #2

Sunset at Spider Rock, 9X12, oil/panel

Hi Everybody,
I'm in the middle of moving a house packed full of stuff from the basement to the top floor, from Minnesota to Arizona. Now I remember why I never wanted to have to move again....Hmmmm. But, it's all worth it to be moving toward something as great as living in the West. I won't have to jump on an airplane in order to paint the mountains anymore. Now I can slip out my back door and I'm there. Within a couple of hours to Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Phoenix and Flagstaff. Within driving distance to....Canyon de Chelly! Not to mention my Gallery. Several lifetimes worth of painting material right in my back yard. I'm feeling so blessed right now....I just have to get through the MOVE!!

But I have a spare moment, so I wanted to post the rest of my Canyon de Chelly paintings. The painting above is of Spider Rock or Tsi na ash jeii, probably the most well known and easily recognizable of the rock formations at the Canyon. This rock spire is 800 feet tall, so you can see that the vantage point is above the spire and is probably over 1000 feet. According to Navajo legend, atop Spider Rock lives Spider Woman, a deity who taught Navajo women to weave. She's also believed, by the Navajo, to carry naughty children to the top of Spider Rock.

The way to do a painting with quick moving light, such as this, is to lock in the shadows quickly (no details), and leave them. Do not try to follow the light. If you get your values down quickly, the whole time checking them against one another, you will have enough information to add the details later if you need to. Even if you have to do it in the studio later, you can, as long as your values are accurate. For this painting, I had plenty of time to do it all on site. Partly because the arc of the sun is relatively low across the sky in Northern Arizona, so when it gets close to setting, it does it more slowly than I'm used to. Which is a blessing.

My friend Rusty Jones and I, sat down to paint this on a rather windy evening. Rusty is an incredibly talented plein air painter and all around good guy. I truly believe that in the two hours we took to paint at this site, the temps dropped twenty degrees. I've painted in a lot of cold weather since I live here in Minnesota, but I have to say that I have never been colder than I was when I painted this one. I wasn't dressed for it in just a t-shirt. Luckily I had a wind breaker in my back pack, cause if I hadn't I don't think I'd have been able to finish it.

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Tsegi Overlook, 11X14, oil/Canvas Panel

Painted on location at Canyon de Chelly, Sept 21, 2009 approx 2pm on a very very windy day. In fact, this painting has a great deal of sand embedded into the paint. It was impossible to turn my paint box to keep the sand out of my paints or off my painting. This painting was painted in wind gusts I have to guess were 30 to 40 mph. So I painted it with one hand holding the paint box and panel and the other holding my brush. This painting truly holds a special place in my heart. My wife calls it my "Sand Painting". That's about right.

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Canyon Passage, 9X12, oil/canvas panel

There are still Navajo families living and working on the floor of Canyon de Chelly. They farm and raise livestock and the fences you pass by while in the Canyon are put up to keep curious tourists out and their livestock in. I've learned that there is an incredible amount of water just a couple of feet under the surface and cause the cottonwoods to be this incredible neon green. If you painted them that way, no one would believe they were that color. So I dial down the saturation in the tree on the right side. The trees in the middle ground are a greyish blue green. I don't know what kind they are, but I thought they were a nice variation of all the cottonwoods.

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Ancient Waters, 9X12, oil/canvas panel

I love the depth of the cliffs in this painting. I didn't have to change too much in this composition. I stayed pretty true to what was actually there. The only change I made was adding water rivulets. Originally the tracks were made by the jeeps that drive through the canyon. All I had to do was fill them with water.

Canyon de Chelly plein air post #1

Navajo Fortress, Canyon de Chelly, 10X20 oil/canvas board

Hi All!
I wanted to talk today about my recent experience of painting at Canyon de Chelly and how you can approach painting such a daunting subject. OK, so you've traveled a long way to this place, you've already painted it in your head a hundred times. You know how to do it, I mean, it seemed so easy when you did it in your head. No problem. But now that you're here with the panoramic vistas and the wind, and your humble place in the Universe are staring you in the face. Time for a deep breath. Painting the cliffs here can be overwhelming if you stand there thinking you have to get it all in. I mean, how do you paint the Grand Canyon, or even the humblest mountain? The key, of course, is the same key as you need to use to paint anything. This isn't any different at all. Just remember this. Simplify. There is no way to keep up with all the visual information you will be faced with. Not to mention all the other stimulation you will be given. As I painted on the rim the last evening I was there, I was dive bombed by a crow (or a raven, I can never tell the difference between the two). It would come at me from behind, and I could here the wind through the beating of his wings as he got close. It also was very windy that evening. So as you stand there trying to paint and tune out all that's happening around you, you need to boil down the scene to it's essence. What's your focal point? Is it in the shadows or the light? If it's the light, you need to keep your detail in the shadow areas to a minimum. At my first plein air workshop, Joe Paquet used to try to pound this into my thick skull. As an illustrator, it didn't make sense to me. How could the detail in the shadows be any less important than the details in the light? I mean, i could see the detail in both when I looked, so how come I had to weed those out? The answer is: you don't paint everything in because, our eyes don't see everything like that. Think about it for a moment.........I'll wait.........yep, when we focus on something, the other things we see are in our periphery. We only see a blurred representation of what surrounds our focal point. So what I'm trying to do as a painter, is a visual representation of what I truly see. Don't stare into the shadows, and you'll get a good idea of what you need to leave out. All that detail of the cracks and crags is wiped away and you're left with only the big shapes. I make sure that the detail I do put into the shadows is minimal and the values are kept pretty close to one another. This gives me a more cohesive painting and a much more pleasing work of art. Thanks Joe for teaching me what to see.

Sandstone and Shadows, 9X12, oil/canvas panel

The second thing that you can do to not be overwhelmed by an overwhelming subject is to play a mind game. Tell yourself that what you are seeing is a big puzzle, with pieces that are unequal in size and shape. Don't think in your head, 'Holy Moly, That is one big canyon down there. No way can I get that down in a couple of hours'. Think of it as putting together a puzzle, and at the end of your time, you'll have a painting. I have to get everything blocked in to judge anything. Now, lord knows I'm not the fastest painter you'll ever come across. It's one of the reasons i usually decline the offer to do a demo. I take my time and work and rework a painting till I feel it's right. I call myself a 'grinder". But I do try to block things in simply and quickly. I can't judge accurately the value of a cliff I've put down until I have the surrounding trees and ground plane and sky in that surround it. Save the details for later. Cracks in the cliffs, tree trunks, variations in warms and cools of the grasses. All of it can, and should be saved for the time that the big shapes are sitting on their proper planes. John F. Carlson's book, "Carlson's guide to Landscape painting", should be in the library of every landscape painter. And every landscape painter should be painting en plein air. No excuses unless you're bed ridden. Then you get a pass....I guess. Carlson's book gives you a great explanation of how atmospheric perspective works and the values of the planes of what you're seeing. I don't want to get into too much detail here, since i don't want to put you to sleep, or give away the surprise ending of the book (the butler didn't do it). But it's a thin book with a lot of gems in it. I don't reread books usually, but I do come back to this one, and every time I do I find more gems. Things I wasn't ready to soak in on my previous reads, I guess. Anyways, you can find it on Amazon used, but even new I think it's only ten bucks or so. Dover also sells it on their website since they're the publishers.


The first painting is called "Navajo Fortress, Canyon de Chelly". The cliff in the center of this painting is famous as being the place where the last of the Navajo held out against Kit Carson, who was sent into Canyon de Chelly in 1864. The army decided that it was time for the Diné to surrender once and for all. This rock fortress was the place the last Navajo holdouts chose to make their stand. According to the story told, the holdouts reached the top of this rock face by using notched tree trunk ladders, which they pulled up behind them. Unfortunately for the natives, Carson simply waited them out until, starving, the final Navajo simply gave up. In the spring of 1864, when the ordeal for the Diné should have been over, another was about to begin. The Long Walk, as it's known to the Navajo, took all the captives from Canyon de Chelly to their new place of exile in Fort Sumner in New Mexico. It was known as the Long Walk because only the sick, the very oldest and youngest of the captives rode. Once at Fort Sumner, the conditions were beyond horrible. The Navajo were one of the few tribes to negotiate with the government to get at least some of their native lands back and eventually were able to return, where they have lived to this day.

The second painting is "Sandstone and Shadows". This was painted within the Canyon, which requires a Navajo guide to accompany you. Kaye Franklin of the Outdoor Painters Society, arranged our guide and four of us split the cost. Traveling in the canyon gives you a point of view that is completely different from painting on the rim. Whatever the time of day, you can find interesting compositions to paint. When I painted this one, I came away feeling that something was missing from it. I put it away for about a week and when I came back to it I knew that it needed another cliff behind the central cliff. So I painted in the far off cliff. I could do it because (thanks to Carlson's book) I understood atmospheric perspective, and the colors of the distant cliffs were still fresh in my mind. I knew what they looked like, so all I needed to do was to put in an interesting shape. I also added some wispy clouds for direction and interest. There weren't any clouds just about the whole time we painted there. Well there was one tiny one that looked like a bean, which we quickly named, but it didn't help much.

I'll post more paintings from the trip later in the week and talk about what I learned, which hopefully can help you too!

Thanks for looking, Steve

Prescott Arizona plein airs

Hi Everyone,
It's been too long since I posted some new paintings here. But I do have an excuse. For me it's the best kind of one, I've been traveling for the past few weeks. Painting on location is something I enjoy doing more than almost anything else in the world. The studies I'm posting here are from my trip to Prescott, Arizona. Recently, Ann and I have purchased a home in Prescott and will eventually be making our home there. We're pretty excited about living out west. Ann is a native Arizonan, while I.....am not. Hmmm. I've got lots to get used to there. I've always lived in a place where I'm at the top of the food chain. So, even though I'll be getting used to coexisting with the rattlesnakes, scorpions, coyotes, tarantulas and other assorted creepy crawly things that bite, scratch, or stick you, I'll be doing it amongst some of the most beautiful western landscape you can find anywhere. I am happy to tell you that I killed my first black widow spider and lived to tell the tale. Relax, she had moved into the garage and had laid lots of eggs. She broke the cardinal rule in my house, They can live there..... as long as I don't see them. If I do, they're fair game. All rules go out the window.

The week we recently spent there was full of pulling the most evil weed in the world. Of course I'm talking about the dreaded tumbleweed. The scourge of the desert. We've discovered there is no easy way to remove this weed from your property. Ya just gotta pull 'em, and keep pulling 'em. And then pull some more. But, I did get out and paint almost every day. One of the things I need to remember to do is spray BOTH arms with sunblock. I sprayed my right arm, but forgot to spray my left painting arm. I will never make this mistake again. Oops. Here's what that looked like
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here are some of the studies I produced that week

Williamson Valley, 10X20, oil on canvas panel

This is the view that overlooks the Williamson Valley and is the location of our new home. Until very recently, the Williamson Valley, located in the shadow of Granite Mountain, was prime cattle grazing country. It's true that there are still plenty of cattle grazing in the area, though, admittedly, these days there are more homes and less live stock. You can still see lots of wildlife here though. Pronghorn antelope are abundant. Coyote can be heard yipping their lonely songs at night, and warily skulking across the roads by day. Horses are corralled in the valley alongside burrows and cattle. It's a wonderful place to visit and experience the wide open spaces of the West.

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Granite Outcrop, 9X12, oil/canvas panel

The paintings I did this week were to get me used to painting rock formations. The kind of formations I don't see much in Minnesota. I was going to be painting in Canyon de Chelly the following week with a group of incredibly talented painters, so I didn't want to show up and suck. This is how I prepared for the paintout. It was my homework. And I think it paid off when I went to the paintout at the Canyon.

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Desert Scrub, 12X12, oil/canvas panel

The desert has a completely different palette than I usually paint on location. Everything has a dusty, subtle color to it. The greens aren't quite as green. It's why, those of us who are crazy enough to paint on location, do it. Those differences just don't show up on film in quite the same way. You simply need to be there to see the difference.


The Granite Dells is a world unto itself. The granite rock formations there have a kind of melted ice cream look to them. There isn't a hard edge to be found on the stone formations. I've been told that Tom Mix used the Dells in many of his movies. I will be doing many paintings here.

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Corriente Creek Wash, 12X9, oil/canvas panel

This is a wash that is around the corner from the house. There was no water in the wash at this time, but I added a trickle to help with the composition and to have something that leads your eye into the scene.

Tomorrow I'll begin posting the paintings I produced at the Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the heart of the Navajo Reservation. Along with some of the photos of the paintout.