Thirty years after our trip to the national parks in southern Utah and seven years since I painted a vast expanse of hoodoos in Bryce Canyon, I felt drawn again to paint more of the magnificent red and orange rock formations from this memorable trip. You can see and read about the Bryce Canyon painting as well as one of my earliest paintings of the Balancing Rock formation in Arches National Park in my previous blog posts.
Our fascination with Arches National Park began as we were approaching the park and saw our first arch in the distance across a strangely fluid bed of rock. Here’s the picture we took.
We didn’t know which arch it was, but we soon discovered that it was Delicate Arch - one of the most famous features in the park. We found the beginning of the trail to the arch and set off. It was quite a long walk across tilted and slippery solid rock with very few signs. We were starting to wonder if we were lost, but finally, Delicate Arch rose up ahead of us. When we first saw this arch from the road, it had looked kind of small and delicate. However as we hiked up to it, we saw that although some of the rocks did look delicately balanced, the total arch was really quite massive. Here is a closer picture including people (see them on the far left) that gives a better perspective of its size.
The Original Drawing
As with all of my paintings, the first step was to complete a pencil drawing. Here are pictures of the drawing as it progressed.
The Painting
The painting process started by applying the base background colors over the pencil drawing. The timing of the painting is close to sunset, so the rocks all have a yellowish glow from the setting sun.
I started applying my Contextural style by painting detailed patterns onto the mountains in the distance behind the arch, followed by a layer of dots on top of them for color, depth and texture.
Next I painted patterns and dots onto the nearer background rocks to the right of the arch.
I then painted my Contextural patterns and dots onto Delicate Arch itself.
A close-up of the top of the arch,
the left side of the arch,
the right side of the arch,
and a super close-up of the lower left side.
The slabs of rock in front of the arch were the last of the red rocks I painted using the patterns and dots that make up my Contextural style.
At Wolfe Ranch along the path to Delicate Arch are some petroglyphs that remind us of the indigenous People who lived here long before it became part of the western expansion of the United States.
It seems appropriate to honor these People’s petroglyphs in the painting, so I’ve replaced some of the dots that I painted onto the patterns on the rocks in front of Delicate Arch with some of their images.
Now that the painting of the red rocks in the background mountains, the nearer surrounding rocks and Delicate Arch itself was completed, all that was left to paint was the canyon floor behind the arch and the sky.
Here is the completed canyon floor,
and a close-up.
The setting sun adds beautiful colors to the clouds in the painted sky.
After 11 monhs of work, my Delicate Arch painting is finished.
