Fall is in the air. School has started. I find myself bouncing back and forth between my new art students at school and being out in the mountains on my annual fall hunting retreat with my brothers and my sons. In the past I have taken my paint box along to the mountains and worked some small compositions while not out hiking around the mountains. I have opted for my digital camera and sketch book this year. I plan on diving in to the studio and recording every wonderful moment I am witnessing. It is amazing to be out in the forest at 10,000 feet and just listen to the wind sing in the trees, or stand in a spruce thicket and have squirrels drop pine cones on your head as they scold you vigorously. It is cool to look up and see the early morning clouds just racing past as they catch those first rays of sunlight. In the evening the intense last orange-red sunlight on the tops of the peaks and edging the clouds looks like glorious glowing hot metal. As I list these things I am reminded that I spend to much time indoors. Well it is back to school and then back to the mountains.I love wearing my three “hats” this time of year, artist, educator and hunter its an interesting combination, I find myself looking for compositions or just admiring the way the light carves its way across a meadow while I am supposed to be hunting…… I guess that’s why I am not a very successful hunter. I almost always come home empty handed.
Watch for the new paintings coming soon……Cozumel, Arches, Buffalo Peak and whatever I see the next couple of weekends.
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About a month ago I went hiking and rediscovered the Buffalo Peak area near the Squaw Peak road (near Provo, Utah) Since then I have shared some of the results in other posts. I thought I would share these efforts today they are all four middle of the day as well as middle of the summer paintings meaning the sun was fairly high in the sky when the dark and light patterns were established. Which makes for high contrast and a bunch of green. Although summer has finally found its way up there and the undergrowth has browned and yellowed up a bit. All four were created using only the palette knife. I have a view of the north face of “Y” mountain from the Buffalo Peak trail in the works now and it is also a small knife painting and as I said in my last post, images from my recent Fish Lake trip are still floating around in my head. On the topic of images floating in my head, ideas from Cozumel and the amazing water and sky surrounding the island are always on my mind they just haven’t hit the canvas yet.(Perhaps all the floating images in my head are due to my ongoing exposure to turpentine.) If you are visiting my blog/web site for the first time make sure you sign up for my blog updates.

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I spent yesterday and the day before listening to a giant floor sander sand the oak floors above my studio and today I am breathing some interesting fumes from the finish being applied up there. It is a good thing though, the water that flooded the area had damaged the oak floor. Well enough of home repairs. I did get a little painting finished yesterday despite the distractions of noise and fumes. As I mentioned above I was working on a view of the the north face of “Y” mountain. The composition as you can see includes plenty of interesting foreground elements and the shapes of several nearby mountains. After looking at the painting for a couple of hours I have decided to try it again, only in the new version I will focus in on the unique geology and surface quality of the mountain and reduce the foreground and surrounding space to a minimum.
Today I worked up this study of the north face of “Y” mountain. I did try and focus in more on the face of the specifics of “Y” mountain. I eliminated most of the foreground. However, I could not help but put in some of those persistent balsam roots which are still struggling to bloom up on the side of the mountain. I like the alternating striped patterns that are created by the changes in the ground cover; meadows, stands of trees, and cliffs all mixed together with late morning light and shadow. I think I may find my jeep pointed in that direction again sometime in the near future There are many paintings waiting to be made along that one mile buffalo peak trail. to be continued…….landscape paintings

Greetings, I had the chance to go fly fishing with my son Nathan. We got up early and went up along the Provo river near Vivien park. The darn fish were not interested in our flies no matter how we presented them. We stayed in the cold water for about an hour and a half and along with whipping the water with my fly line I watched the sunshine creep down the south end of Mt. Timpanogos and bathe the canyon in bright August light.
Nathan and I decided to try our luck further down the river so we found ourselves near the mouth of Provo canyon standing in the water below the Murdock irrigation dam and finally we ended up on an old steel bridge, where we actually could see several nice brown trout feeding lazily in the clear shallow water. Fortunately for them (and us) they could see us too so nobody got hooked. After watching the fish for a few minutes I looked up stream to the east and decided I was done fishing and needed to get painting.
I wanted to capture the sunlight bouncing off the shallow stream contrasting against the shadowed foliage. I am still enjoying the palette knife. The way it deposits the color on the canvas seems good. I am painting another view from the old bridge. I will add it to this post soon.

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In this second version I tried to focus in on the contrast between the highlights on the water and the shadowed cottonwoods. Today I also worked on a drawing from my trip up to Buffalo peak. It is the view from the peak looking south towards the north face of “Y” mountain. I have also been working on some ideas from my recent family camping trip to Fish Lake.

I got a chance to spend an hour or two in my studio today looking at the drawings and photographs I took out along the Pony Express route last week. When I decided to go out west I was thinking about Maynard Dixon and some of his big sky desert compositions so I felt lucky that I got a day with all kinds of clouds. I liked the movement in the clouds when I saw them. I think I will paint these clouds again and modify the composition a bit move and enhance the focal point and have more sky and even less ground, like my sketchbook drawing. Check back later this week and I’ll add the new composition to this post.

I captured more of the circular shape I was first attracted to out on the desert in this study.

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A couple of years ago I visited a family members home in another western state and hanging in their hallway was this large oil painting of Broken Bow Arch painted by my father, Byrd Bartholomew. Byrd really connected with that arch. He painted dozens of different versions. Along with twisted juniper trees, Broken Bow arch was his favorite oil painting subject. My mother and he hiked in there to photograph the arch regularly. When I saw the painting I barely remembered it. He painted it during the early 1970′s I know this because there is a similar composition hanging in a home in northern Utah. I really enjoy this Broken Bow arch painting because of the tree Byrd placed in the foreground. He really had a passion for the twisted junipers of Utah. The particular tree represented in this painting (and in others), he found growing along the side of the road between Calf Creek and Boulder. Utah in what is now The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Sadly for the tree and Byrd the road was widened during the late 80′s and the tree did not survive. I guess that he and the tree live on in this and several other of his paintings
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Brigham Young University’s Herald B. Lee Library added a couple of paintings of Broken Bow Arch by both myself and my dad to their permanent collection a few years ago. In some future blog entry I will try and feature those four paintings.

A couple years ago my mother planned a family hike down to the arch for old times sake the group included my mother, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. More than 30 decedents of the artist, Byrd Bartholomew made the trip. As the last of the group was leaving the arch to hike back up out of the canyon I snapped this photograph. (This link will show you the location.)

Just for fun a reader in Texas e-mailed me an image of her Byrd Bartholomew version of Broken Bow. Thanks Amy.

I woke up yesterday morning and decided to go paint or draw something different as I left my house at 6:30 a.m. I looked east towards the mountains and something told me to go west to the desert. I drove out into western Utah along the historic Pony Express route. It must have been the ghost of Maynard Dixon who told me to go west. As the early morning sun lit up the desert peaks and wide valleys I was reminded of Dixon’s clean, simple and elegant compositions. If you read my blog you will discover that Maynard Dixon is one of my hero’s. I drove past several Pony Express markers and found myself out near Simpson Springs. I saw an interesting mountain to the south so I headed that way. I checked my GPS(Rhino 120) and noticed that I did not have the maps loaded for this particular part of Utah. For some unexplained reason I had neglected to tell my wife, Rhonda where I was headed as I was thinking that very thought my steering felt a little mushy. I was about 60 miles north of Delta, Utah that was my best chance at a cell signal I checked my phone and actually made contact with her although it was a very very poor connection. She was surprised when I told her I was out west. She had assumed that I was headed up into the mountains east of our home. I discovered that texting worked tons better so we continued our conversation via text messages. I am not very adept at that form of communication and I had to stop the vehicle for each text. On the second “text stop” I got out of the Jeep and noticed my left front tire was almost a pancake. I had been driving in and out of sand for 30 miles so I assumed the mushy felling I was getting was the sand….Not. To make matters worse to the south and west of me a large thunderstorm was brewing and the road I was on looked like it was a muddy beast when it got wet. I quickly repaired my tire and impatiently waited for my little compressor to do its thing while I watched the rain get closer. When the tire was pumped up I raced the storm across the desert, guessing at my route as my GPS and my jeep had no maps. After several snap road choices I made it to a gravel road north of the Little Sahara sand dunes just as the rain caught me. I was glad for a firm foundation. Well I took some interesting photos and made a couple of sketches but in all the fun I did not make a painting. Lessons learned today; tell someone where you are going, take a map or a loaded GPS with you, If the steering feels mushy check the tires and don’t go alone.

While hiking with my family up near Buffalo Peak a few days ago a cloud shadow passed over as I was crossing one of the meadows along the trail and the contrast between to hazy pinkish summertime Mt. Timpanogos in the distance and the shadowed cool maple trees and meadow in my foreground caught my attention. I determined that I would give that contrasty feeling try. At the request of my internet guru Daniel I have included a short little tutorial on my working methods the subject is sketching landscape values with gray Prismacolor markers. I use them both in my sketch book and at times as an under-drawing for painting the advantage of using the markers is that they come in ten different values so if I draw my design with a light marker I can then fill in different values rapidly with the other markers in my little video I use a 30% 70% and 90% cool gray markers. I have painted over Prismacolor markers with oils and acrylics and I have never had any problems.

I continue to enjoy oil painting with my knife! This oil painting of Utah Lake from the Buffalo peak trail is an interesting example of the perspective of disappearance as Leonardo da Vinci described it. Everything gets lighter and more blue as it appears to recede into the distance. We now call it atmospheric or aerial perspective , however the effect is the same now as it was for Leonardo the process makes us believe for a short time or perhaps longer that we are seeing space as opposed to the reality of the flat canvas. Understanding how to make or suggest space is one of the keys to landscape painting whether it be “en plein air” or in the studio. Art students should know the rules of aerial perspective described above They should also consider overlapping, and the rules of placement and scale every time they draw or paint the landscape.
I saw many potential compositions along the trail to Buffalo Peak and it only takes me 30 minutes to drive up there. So check back soon and see what kind of space I can make of those vistas.

PS don’t forget the insect repellent when you go out drawing and painting during the summer. The itchy welts on my legs will remind me.

I oil painted this knife study based on a snapshot that I took a couple of weeks ago while Rhonda and I were hiking on the ridge trail above little deer creek. The ridge trail and alpine loop are areas where I have painted many paintings during the last few summers. One of the paintings I made in this area was part of the Midway Plein Air festival.
I am thoroughly enjoying painting with a knife again its almost as if I am carving the painting. The knife helps me suggest the landscape as opposed to describing it which is something I find myself doing when I use a brush.
I was up on Buffalo Peak yesterday again in the late afternoon with some of my family. Everyone was surprised at how green everything still is. Normally it has started to dry out by mid July at that altitude(7800-7900 ft). I plan on working the vistas in that Buffalo Peak area for the next couple of weeks so I better buy some green paint.

It has been a while since I have been able to paint. A short list of distractions both good and bad which have kept me out of the paint might include; slot canyon hiking, holidays, hikes, 5K runs, playing with grand children, bike rides, professional conferences, final testing, graduations, home repairs, flooded basement(I am not kidding) the list could go on. Finally I was able to get out and draw and photograph some landscapes to paint. Last week I went to the ridge trail above American Fork Canyon an area where I have painted before on several occasions. This week went up the Squaw Peak trail above Provo and did several drawings in the Buffalo Peak area. I have painted near there before but I was impressed with the location and I plan on working there again soon. I have included a studio study which I made yesterday (July 15th 2010). The main problem I was trying to solve aside from capturing the essence of the place was the mass of yellow balsam root flowers and the texture their very green foliage presented. I think the palette knife helped me capture the “feel” of the foliage. I am still working on ideas from Cozumel and Arches hopefully my schedule will let me squeeze them in soon. Below is a mostly silent video of this painting being made.