Zion National Park, Utah

 A few pictures of Zion National Park.  I've been there many times and am always in awe of the beauty of the Park.  There are so many trails you can take, and even on a hot day you can find a canyon that is nice and cool.

I've been on the edge of cliffs with sheer dropoffs of probably a thousand feet.  I've hiked up creeks and river, under waterfalls and through small ponds.  I've also trod across trails that are so hot and dusty it seemed like I would burn up.

Here are a few sketches of Zion.  The Narrows.  The Watchman.  Angels Landing.

I can't wait until I can go back again.  it is such and amazing place.

If you are interested, I've got some videos too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4wMGGgQ85E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJhk51mCFL4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdiWcqOLMQc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYS2o5zbnw

A Barn in the 'Hood

Ok, so on this painting i was working on letting color mix on the paper.  You can see on the barn roof and siding, that the colors are not uniform.  We all want to think that colors are mostly solid, but if you look closely, most colors are a mishmash of many many different colors.  I think I am getting a handle on form and shape, I might even be getting a handle on depth in my paintings.   Painting while allowing multiple colors to make up the body of each object may well make my paintings look more alive and vibrant.

Hope you enjoy.

Angel's Landing

Some good and some bad on this painting.  Lets start with the good.

I was gonna do a dark sky, or at least darker, but when I saw how this one turned out after only one layer of paint, I liked it so much I stopped.  And knowing what the sky looks like in Zion most of the time, there are no clouds anyway, so the sky seems about right.  The next thing that is really good, I think, are the mountains in the background.  They really do look like they are far away.  Just enough detail so you can see a few crevasses in the rocks, but not too much detail that its out of place.  I really like them.

Now for the not so good.  I don't think i got quite the right shape of this hill.  It is, in general, dome-ish, which I got, but somehow its not quite right.  I might go back and see if I cant make the far side of the path fall off just a bit, maybe that will help it look like it is rounder.

I might go back and pencil in some chains like on the real pathway, but I don't have time to do it today, but wanted to get this picture up.  If I make changes, I'll repost.  Hope you all enjoy.

horses that look like horses, sort of

So I hiked up to my new favorite spot on campus again today.  And again, there were horses around the pond.  I decided to just try another sketch of them, and I think these ones came out a lot better.  The veiw is actually pretty spectacular, you can see the peaks like are in this picture but if you were to pan to the left you would see another one framing the valley behind.  The horses were very gentle and I took a few minutes to talk to and pet them on my way too and from the side of the pond.  I'm not sure if they wanted to be painted or not, but after about 15 minutes they got a little restless and 2 of them wandered off.  I guess I should have said that there really were about 6 or 7 horses there.

On my way back, I stopped off at the Arboretum.  I wanted to see if there was anything of interest there to paint, and if there were any seating areas where I could spread out.  As it turns out there are a lot of interesting things to see there. I'll definitely be doing a couple of paintings from there.  Get ready to check them out.