I’ve recently been selling some art on eBay. One of my patrons asked me to create a painting of her father fly fishing on the Gallatin River. She sent a photo for reference and said she would like the scene to have some color, maybe like fall.
This was the result. It’s a small baseball card sized painting just 3-1/2″ x 2-1/2″ and I used watercolor and gouache.
I’ve done my share of stream fishing and I can say it is a wonderful way to enjoy a day. Take a sack lunch, hike a little ways to the stream, explore the eddies and rapids…it seems to me there is more to do and more to observe than in boat fishing on a lake. Not to put down boat fishing…it’s just another style. Between the two, I like streams and rivers. If you should land a trout you will see up close a truly beautiful fish. As fish go, a trout’s eyes seem intelligent. One is inclined to return it to it’s waters and let it be.
Go in the fall and you’ll find yourself so far away from your cares and worries that you’ll plan to retire near a stream or wadeable river. It’s that kind of a peaceful experience. Of course if you go to a crowded, well worn location the experience is totally different. So do some research first. Check out fish camps and guide services. Or get a book on local trout fishing.
For my artist readers, here is the reference photo.
Second to Old Faithful, The Great Falls of The Yellowstone is the most visited place in the park. There are a couple of vantage points and I believe you can get up close via a trail. Unfortunately we didn’t have the time for the hike.
When one takes a look at these falls from a distance, you can still hear them and see the mist rising from the roiling pool below. There is an enormous amount of energy in all that moving water. The resulting canyon is beautiful and textured with randomly undulating cliffs and washes dotted with Ponderosa pines. As with the Grand Prismatic Spring, you enter that unhindered place in the mind where you just observe and wonder…and pause. No cares, no worries, just beauty.
This piece is up for auction on eBay if you are interested.
This is another quick post from the Yellowstone trip we took in 2000. As I mentioned in the last post, Yellowstone presents other-worldly landscapes.
Grand Prismatic Spring is in the Midway Geyser Basin alongside the Firehole River. It’s the largest hot spring in the U.S. and third largest in the world.
You just want to stand there like a zombie and stare at it. The tourists around you suddenly seem to be very distant as your mind lets go of your troubles and concerns and you enter a zone of non-thought. Many places in nature provide that sort of solace. We’re blessed here in North America with an abundance of them.
This little painting is up for auction at eBay if you are interested.
Back in 2000 we took a trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. This little scene is a simple landscape from an area of the park called Lamar Hills. It’s a pastoral part of the park, peaceful and serene.
The rest of Yellowstone is peaceful and serene too in an other-worldly sort of way.
Steam. Steam is all around. Every geyser and spring brings it forth. It lends an air of ethereal mystery to the place.
Bubbling mud pools.
Acres of travertine terraces.
A beautiful lake with hot springs beside it.
Mountains, rivers, streams.
Waterfalls, big waterfalls.
Boiling hot springs and pools the color of Scope mouthwash, trimmed in a array of colors from white to mustard to rust, where bacteria actually thrive.
Bison strolling down the highway — big as your car.
Moose, bear, elk, deer, raccoons, yellow-bellied marmots, park workers, and a bunch of other critters all around.
And to top it all off, just about the whole thing is a volcanic caldera due to go off big time between now and the next 100,000 years.
So, here is a pastoral scene from Yellowstone. More to come.
This one is up for auction at eBay if you are interested. An inexpensive way to collect some original watercolor art. Small and collectible.
I live two hours from the tippy top of the North Georgia mountains — just an hour from the foothills. I go as often as I can and hike or just ride around and look. I take the ol’ sketchbook and paints with me too.
Years ago I discovered the forest service roads up there. These roads are graded dirt and gravel and are used by the forest service for fire control access and land management. Some are well maintained such that a sedan can travel them if need be. As such, the outdoorsy of us just load up the ol’ Toyota and go do a little fishing in a cool, remote stream or lake — or visit one of the more accessible waterfalls.
The young and restless go mountain biking and multi-day hiking and camping on a regular basis. There is Appalachian Trail access up in those hills too. That’s quite handy if you’re actively being badgered to join the AARP and not generally known to be, shall we say…”active”, by your advice giving exercise and wellness experts at the office.
With a little effort you can drive to the AT on a Saturday morning, hike a mile uphill and a mile downhill back to the car, then spend the rest of the day ridin’ around, eatin’ bar-b-que and banana pudding, and being generally lazy and carefree in the cool mountain air — while they go to the gym, play a set of tennis, or heaven forbid run for eight or ten miles in ninety-five degree Georgia humidity, all on a diet of fruit, veggies, yogurt, and tofu.
Then on Monday, when they brag to you about the healthy exercise and eating they did over the weekend, tell your domesticated athlete, city slicker, tofu eating peers that YOU hiked the Appalachian Trail. Hah! Take that!
But I digress…
The painting is from my memory of traveling many of these forest roads. They are calming, remote…and interestingly…they lead to places you didn’t know were there. As you drive along you wonder, “where’s this go?” And that is oddly fun.
No story or off the wall thinking behind this one.
Just practicing up on developing a landscape style that allows me to paint quickly, almost like a sketch.
The objective is to capture the impression of a scene, both physically and emotionally.
It’s more about shapes, color, and light than detail.
The detail is filled in by the viewers mind.
The test of success is to step away and look at the painting. If the abstract strokes and colors meld into a cohesive, believable scene from a few feet back, then all is well.
This scene is an imaginary one from our trip to Maine last year.
For the artists among you, it was done with watercolor and gouache over a very simple pencil sketch.
We have a bunch of crows in our neighborhood that wake me up every morning. I’m not appreciating that fact right now because they usually start cawing about an hour or two before I intend to get up.
This has set me to paying attention to crows a bit. I’ve never really watched them much.
Not far from me is a McDonalds…the one that can never get the tea order correct.
I was sitting in the parking lot enjoying my items from the dollar menu…and lo! I spotted a Crow waiting for a french fry.
How do I know he was waiting for a french fry? Because I tossed one out the window and he immediately swooped down and flew off with it.
It suited my mind at the time to believe I had communicated with the Crow in some sort of mental stream of silent man-to-bird consciousness, discerning that he wanted a french fry. And thus I gave to the Crow what he so longed after, fulfilling my repressed feelings of wanting to commune with nature on a level that our Native American brethren must have commanded when they lived here alone on this continent, in the wilderness, centuries ago.
That of course is B.S.
Truth be told, I could have thrown a five pound chuck roast out the window and he would have tried to fly off with it as well. Crows will eat anything.
But hey…it makes for a good story doesn’t it?
