Here are some sketches from our time off in the Pisgah National Forest plus one larger painting. In all but one case I began the scene in situ and then finished it the next day back at the cabin. This stretch up here has been closer to the pace of painting I had as a college student. I have enjoyed it a great deal.
The first one is Max Patch looking west toward the Tennessee line. Christina and I went up there with Pearl and slowly made our way to the top. It was blustery and very cool. Lines of clouds swept past, surrounding us. For a memorable time we were alone. A young woman hiking the AT approached from one direction and then a group of about 30 teenage girls came from the opposite direction. Christina and I went down the hill and I set up to start a painting.
I didn't go for the softer texture that the mountains usually have here. Instead I used the small paintbrush like a colored pencil and so the piece has a texture mostly of short slanted lines. This stage has my favorite state of the distant peaks on the right. Those colors are so soft and beautiful. I laid it out in a blue drawing and spent about 3 hours filling it in and then walked down to meet up with Christina in the trailhead parking lot.
Back home I worked on the contours of the mountain faces and tried to keep the colors on the light side. I also worked on the foreground and came up with a combination of layers that worked well. It ended up having a stubby line texture and a mixture of blues and wheat yellows that people sometimes associate with Vincent.
On this same hike, I took a photo of Christina with Pearl lying down looking to the north. I sketched something out very rough but didn't paint it at the site. Instead I came home and worked on it sometimes using a reference picture. This is unlike how I usually work. The scene of Christina lying down before a bank of grasses has a little echo of Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, and Christina would empathize with her namesake's affliction. In any event, I knocked out the first version of this based on the drawing and tended to exaggerate the curves and paint in (for me) a comic book style.
In he next stage I de-emphasized and moderated the curves of the hills in the middle distance, separated Christina a little more from Pearl and eliminated the backpack. I spent a while getting the mountain in the distance to a satisfactory state. This is kind of a sentimental scene for me but I am looking for ways to add more humans into the work.
I like this sky and the undulation of the mountain. I also like Christina's arms and the yellow straw hat. I regret leaving the bank of tall grass so underpainted, but I didn't want to risk making things worse.
The third scene, also done on Max Patch was from a visit several days later. I was alone and found a spot looking to the east near the place where the trail intersects the AT. I took a path about 30 yards down from the trail and that was enough to keep away most passers by.
It was a day that threatened rain. I picked the scene because of the three trees in the foreground, and the layers of mountains behind them. I had fun exploring this scene and finding ways to simplify all the details before me. I used one of those viewfinders to frame the image and help me keep the composition within the proportions of this little canvas. I went through several stages quickly in this scene mainly because the sky was threatening rain and so the shadows cast on the scene before me shifted quickly. As that warning cold wave of air came along, I quickly covered the foremost mountain in a dark blue black and then packed out. I like very much how the distant range blends in with the cloudy sky here. Wish I had held onto that.
Something weird took hold of me on this one when I came back to it. I spent a while trying to get the mountains into balance and to make them look more realistic. Then at some point I was stuck on the sky and I turned the piece upside down to work on it- something I do when I need to detach from representational work. After doing this I found a piece of charcoal stick and re-established the lines of the mountains and I liked that. It was very flat however and the scene seemed to have more of a color woodblock appearance. I went ahead and finished it in that spirit and ended up with this.
The final piece (unless I squeeze one more in on my last day here) was a view of Laurel River. For the first time, we were obliged to hike more than a mile down the path to get to the public portion of the river. I set up just in time for a rain that warped the little canvas board I had so I set that aside and waited. I unwrapped a 24x30" canvas and set about studying how water moves among the rocks in the river. I could probably do this for a long, long time. It is so hypnotic and calming. A few years back I had a success on a small scene from the Laurel River and so I wanted to try something larger and more complex. I spent about three hours on this and had to pack out. I was working on some painterly nuances in the river flow and becoming annoyed with how mushy it had become so I picked up a big round brush and used black paint to reestablish the lines of the scene. Some of those lines were really good and gave the work a zesty edge.
I liked this a lot but I wanted to do a better job on the water and finish the tree. I spent about 7 or 8 more hours on this over a couple of days to get the various paths of water to work together and this required very intentional (a cliché I hate) strokes of paint and a lot of close mixing of colors to get things to have volume and movement. I think this is a decent job and would love to have the chance to really master painting transparency, foam, and water movement. It is simply wonderful.
Turns out I did have one more to do. Christina and I went to Zimmerman's farm so she could pick blackberries. No one was there except a few cautious dogs and someone on a distant tractor. Christina strapped on a basket and walked down the rows marked with flags as approved for picking. She got beautiful results. I followed her with a little 9x12" canvas and did two Sharpie studies of her.
Back home in Gulfport, I added some basic colors to this little study and will let this sit for a week or so before I finish it.
