A Week for Sketching

I kept my art activities strictly to sketching and playing on the computer this week.  I don't know why, I just wasn't in the mood to pick up the paint brushes.  I think maybe I enjoy sketching quickly and loosely with charcoal rather than doing the tighter, more detailed drawings I've been doing lately.  I think charcoal is a good medium for studying compositions and subjects for painting.  It seems like many figurative artists use charcoal a lot for studies but landscape painters not so much.  Charcoal seems to have a kinship with oil painting that other sketching mediums don't have, I think that's because the marks made with charcoal are so malleable, they can be relatively easily be removed, adjusted and blended much like a brush stroke in oil painting.  Maybe these experiments in charcoal will lead to me giving oil painting a shot again.

"Roots I"

8" X 10" Charcoal on paper

Original - $80

I really like tree roots, especially those that grow from the bases of pine trees when the soil has eroded around them and they no longer have much more than rocks to cling to.  I found this scene in Big Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch National Forest in northern Utah.  This area is a short drive from where I live.  I need to visit the local canyons more often, I used to go up there nearly weekly, however the crowds have become kind of overwhelming.

The alternative to going up in the canyons is staying near home and visiting the Jordan River Parkway.  The Parkway is an oasis of nature running through the middle of the heavily populated Salt Lake Valley and even though it's very close by, (I used to walk to it) I don't visit it often enough.  Seems I've been getting more and more lazy every year.  Today I took a step to rectify that and went for a walk on the Parkway and I took my camera and sketchbook of course.

These were very quick and basic sketches, just ten minutes or so each with .9 mechanical pencil.  The idea was just to practice observation and get a feel for the sense of place.  It's easier than ever to take great photographs but cameras aren't experiencing machines, they don't feel.  I feel art should be about the human response to our subjects, not our response to an image captured by a machine.  That said of course I often work from photos, far more often than not.  Part the reason for that is the fact that I still work full time. From November and into March the lack of evening light limits me to only getting out on the weekends and even then the weather often does not cooperate, not to mention I have other interests and often they take up time on the weekends.  I believe a good compromise is to just take out a sketchbook and a pencil and make some direct observations of nature.  Not only is this good drawing practice but it fills your memories with sights, sounds, and smells that just don't come through in a photograph, even if you take that photograph yourself.

All that said about photographs I still take lots of them, (thank heaven for digital cameras!), here are a couple from today's walk.

As you can see while autumn is winding down it's still spectacular.  It was a perfect day for a walk, sunny and 60 degrees.

Autumn Draws to a Close

Daylight savings time has ended and most of the trees have lost all or the majority of their colorful leaves.  Autumn is a wonderful season but it is all too short.  Now we have freezing temperatures, at least overnight and daylight so short you blink your eyes and it's gone.  Now the transition into winter begins.  This time always induces a bit of melancholy in me, yearning for the summer past and dread of the coming winter.  Sorry, I just really dislike winter.  At least I can paint any season I want any time of the year.  Here are the last two autumn scenes I painted.

"Red Mountain Aspens"

16" X 12", acrylic on panel

This painting is based on a photo I took on one of my hikes in the Wasatch mountains.  The hike was during summer so obviously I took my liberties with color.  This painting was mostly done with a palette knife as well.  I really should have got out for an autumn hike this year, but I didn't, the painting will have to do.

"Roadside Attraction"

12" X 9", acrylic on 1/8" panel

I can't help it, I look at trees when driving, a lot, they are actually a roadside distraction for me.  Especially in autumn, not just because of the colors, but once the leaves start thinning out I see more of the tree's structure.  Whenever I see an interesting tree I have the urge to stop, get out of the car and photograph it, of course I have to resist that urge when on the freeway.  I decided to leave the palette knives on the table for this one and only used brushes.