As much as we enjoy traveling around the world, we have found magnificent natural beauty here at home in our national parks. Contexturalism, with its layers of color and texture, is a great style for portraying these natural wonders.
Crater Lake
Oregon's Crater Lake is one of these magnificent spots. There are innumerable awesome vistas around the lake, but my favorite was this one overlooking the Phantom Ship. This view seemed perfect for a painting.
The stars of this painting are the Phantom Ship and the rim of the crater as they are reflected on the deep blue water of the lake. Using a little creative license, I decided to edit out all but three large trees in the foreground to assure that these stars are seen clearly as the primary focus, and to imagine the view in the golden glow of sunrise.
The Phantom Ship is painted in golden colors against the deep blue lake. Its reflection in the lake is painted with a darker gold color. This reflection has mirror images of the patterns found on the ship itself which I found much more difficult to paint than I expected. I did not put the final layer of dots on the Phantom Ship or its reflection in order to better portray the separate craggy rocks that make up the ship. The dots would unrealistically smooth out these rocks.
The rim of the crater and its mirror-image reflection are painted with similar golden colors. The mirror-image reflection on the right was particularly difficult to paint since it went so much farther into the lake. I again left the final layer of dots off of the areas of bare rock to give them a more rugged appearance, but I added a layer of green dots on the wooded areas of the cliffs to represent individual trees in the distance. These dots are also reflected in the water (as is my signature among the dots).
The same technique was used on the rim on the far side of the lake. The water is a lighter shade of blue in the distance and the golden colors are more muted. Green tree-covered mountains are seen in the far distance beyond the rim.
The large fir trees in the foreground were painted using the full contextural style including the final layer of dots.
My finished Crater Lake painting is shown below.
Death Valley - Zabriskie Point
On our trips to Las Vegas, we prove that contrary to popular opinion, gambling and partying are not required to have a great time. Of course we enjoy some of the great buffets and the many free or nearly free shows both inside and outside the hotels - such as the Bellagio's water show and its Conservatory and Gardens. We also love checking out any new hotels to see what kinds of over-the-top attractions they have to offer, but best of all for us are our day trips to places like Death Valley
We went to Death Valley having little idea what to expect. All I knew about it was that pioneers who tried to cross it in the movies usually died from heat and lack of water. We weren't too worried about the heat since it was February. In fact we almost froze to death on top of one of the mountains overlooking the valley as the wind gusted to about 50 mph. What we were definitely not expecting was the awesome beauty of the place.
The rock formations in the canyons leading out of the valley were wonderful, as were the sand dunes and the endless mounds of borax. However the best place we found was Zabriskie Point. It took these two pictures stitched together to capture the full expanse of this deeply carved landscape.
These intricately carved formations promised to be one of the most challenging paintings I had ever tried. My first decision was to replicate the two photos by using two separate 11" x 14" canvases. I made this decision because I wanted to work on the initial drawings while traveling, and the ship was sailing. I could easily fit an 11" x 14" canvas in my luggage, but not an 11" x 28" one.
I always do a pencil sketch on the canvas before starting a painting. Many of these sketches are simple outlines to identify the basic shapes and sizes for each of the components of the painting. However for this painting it was obvious that I would have to complete a very detailed drawing before I could start painting. So every sea day afternoon on our cruise between the various educational lectures, I spent a few hours drawing the first of the two canvases. By the time we returned home, I had completed the sketch on the first canvas and was beginning the sketch on the second. This was the first time I had done such a complete sketch, and I liked it so much that I wasn't sure that it needed to be painted!
However the painting was well worth the effort. The contextural style with its layers of color and texture not only enhanced the carved formations as seen in the closeups below,
but also worked well when painting the distant mountains.
The two canvases were painted at the same time so that the colors could be matched thus allowing them to fit perfectly together in the final painting. I built a box frame that showcases the two canvases together. Each canvas could be shown separately, but together they provide the expansive beauty of Zabriskie Point.
Bryce Canyon - The Amphitheater
As wonderful as Crater Lake and Death Valley are, it's hard to believe, but Bryce Canyon is even more awesome. To truly appreciate it, you have to go to Bryce Canyon and walk among the multitude of carved spires (called hoodoos) and admire the ever-changing hues of yellow, orange, rust, pink and brown. Part of its splendor is that it is so accessible.
Our favorite overlook in the park and probably its most famous is called The Amphitheater.
As challenging as the drawing was for Zabriskie Point, I knew this drawing would be even harder. I decided to use a small 11" x 14" canvas so that the amount of drawing would be minimized. The downside was that in order to paint the delicate spires onto this small canvas, I would have to do the entire painting using toothpicks.
I started with the upper rim of the canyon, and carefully drew the details of The Amphitheater section by section.
I then started the painting. I've been having trouble finding a slide show site that I like (send me any suggestions you might have), so I'm going to show you many of the individual slides here that show the progression of the painting. I started by painting the base layers of color first onto the canyon floors, and then slowly onto the cliffs and hoodoos.
Then I added patterns over the base layers, and a final layer of dots onto the patterns.
And finally, the finished Bryce Canyon painting.
I enjoyed painting these scenes from our national parks and believe that the contextural style fits them well. I am sure that I will do more of these paintings, but I'm currently working on African scenes as you saw with my recently completed Chobe Checker. I plan on discussing my African paintings in detail in my next blog post.