Blog

Palo Duro State Park is the second largest canyon in the United States after the Grand Canyon.   It has always ben one of my most beloved places to paint and to camp.  Alan and I have spent many days exploring it beauty.  On this visit there had been a sever storm that dropped many of inches of rain into the canyon which covered many of the crossings and closed trails.

One of the advantages of the rain is that it brings out the colors of the rock strata.  From bright red to purple, yellow, ochre, put white, bluish grey and turquoise these stripes are fantastic to see.

We have had a good amount of rain this year and the temperatures have been moderate.  I found that what usually was bare rock was covered with a  myriad vegetation action of all colors and forms.  Of course there was cactus and yuccas and many grasses and assorted wild flowers.  The painting above  had what appeared to be giant stepping stones sticking out the the canyon walk  and were surrounded by all sorts of grasses from bright white to yellow with lots of greens thrown in.  

Near our campsite one morning I was intrigued by the way the early morning sun hit the edges of the canyon.  It quickly was touching all the edges of the Spanish skirted red cliffs as it climbed up into the sky.

One of the most beautiful things in the canyon were the bright yellow cotton wood trees that followed the creeks as they twisted and joined in the bed of the canyon.  The rain had formed new ledges along these creeks and water was still racing along.  All were bright orange with the fast moving force of the water. I had brought some of Alan's ashes to spread into the canyon as he loved the place and we had so many fond memories of our time spent there.

The Canyon is famous for its Hoo Doos.  There can be found through the Canyon because of the hard and soft structure of the layers of sediment.  The soft layers ae quickly removed by the wind and water leaving stacks of hard rocks on top.  It is an incredible balancing act that will eventually topple.  The most famous of them is quite large, it's known as the Lighthouse.  By way of an hour long hike you can reach its location.  Below is a gouache painting of a much smaller version of the Lighthouse.

Below is a panting of a dry gulch that had accumulated many different colors of rocks and sediment during the recent rains. I think the white substance if gypsum.  Its appearance was almost that of water.  Vegetation added color buy tucking its roots under some of the rocks like little islands.  I found the effect so beautiful. The sky was such an intense blue.  Not a single cloud was to be seen,  

Ony three days were spent there this time.  The cedar below was hanging onto the side of a cliff behind the stables.  I was sure that I had painted that exact tree many years ago.  It hangs in my bedroom.  It was broken and twisted, but still managed to be covered with so green foliage.  Bright red striation and purple variations  were in the background.  

It's impossible to paint fast enough to use all of the scenes from a week of plain air painting. Many stay in my mind and I wonder what else I could paint from that experience.  On this last trip to Kerrville my house mate was the podiatrist and master watercolorist Al Kline.  We  both found mutual enthusiasm in the scenery around the Tierra Linda Ranch.  It included a 150 year homesteads and the tail end of the Autumn season foliage.  There  were sheep, lambs, longhorns and lots the trappings of a working ranch.  During the 5 days we painted in this event 4 were spent painting on this ranch.  I painted 6 paintings and Al with his watercolors doubled my output with a beautiful array of 12 paintings. They were fresh and lovely, "crispy" in his language. By the end of the week I was thinking about what I could do this my watercolors.  They are lighter/easier to carry and by the very nature of the medium often must be handled quick as a wink.

I've been exploring watercolors in my studio since covid and while I have not had the nerve to bring them with me on a plain aigret event. They have remained to be enjoyed as a studio practice.  That exploration started for two reasons.  Covid kept me from traveling and I had to depend on memory and years of photos that I had made.  The second reason was a trip to Uruapan in Mexico and my need to lighten the load of my backpack.  I needed to be lighter and quicker on that kind of travel.  So I spend covids incubation  painting with watercolor.   I have loved it when I worked at my first job at Hallmark Cards and I was really enjoying returning to that medium.  While it is different that oil painting I found that it had a nice effect on my  thought process in oil.  I painted two watercolor paintings the week before I went to Kerrville that were from McKinney Texas.  They are on a previous  Blog.

So I gave myself the assignment of thinking like I was painting plain air  while I was still sitting in my studio. The tot painting of the longhorns was one that I struggled with while painting outside.  I spent 2 afternoons on it.  The longhorn was no longer around and I st struggled to make it work.  The white limestone creek bed and the ochre on ochre fall colors were a challenge in both mediums.  You can see that I feared letting the paint run and mix in the fussy way it looks. Was too much paint in the background.  It should have looked misty and not dark.  

The Black Horse with the Haybales started out with a wonderful blotchy blue and green wash.  I quickly lost the beauty of the paper.  I was not able to simplify the elements that seems to me to be the essence of watercolor.  What I liked about the sene when I saw it was the blue cast over the entire landscape in the just before daylight atmosphere. Maybe part of doing a watercolor is in being able to see ahead of time what must be done with the watercolor to make it work.  I didn't paint this scene peon air. 

These Silos were on the Homestead.  Weathered and rusted with all sorts of stuff leaning up against them and in the grass around them. I tend to be color driven.  I can see colors when others ask where did I get that.  I liked what I could do with the sky and the grasses in the front in the watercolor and it was done in about the same time or less than the oil sketch I did no location.  I need to be able to get my color transitions to be more due to the nature of the watercolor and not so contrived.