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Saturday, February 5, 2011

Sedona Plein Air Festival - And the Grand Canyon Painting

I found out that I've been invited back to the Sedona Plein Air Festival.  This makes my sixth consecutive year as one of 30 invited artists from across the US, and as always, I am honored.  Among the 2011 painters will be Kevin Macpherson and my friend Lois Griffel.  Go to the Sedona Plein Air Festival website for the full list of artists and the schedule, all of which will be posted in the next few weeks.

For the Grand Canyon Celebration of the Arts, in addition to participating in the "Plein Air on the Rim" event, I am required to put a studio painting of the canyon in the exhibit.  This week I had some time to begin work on that.  Although the painting isn't finished yet, I thought I'd show you the in-progress painting and also a photo of the studio.   It's a 16x20 oil, worked up from photos and a couple of plein air reference sketches.  I'm really enjoying working on it in the afternoons while listening to my various Pandora Internet radio stations.  (Pandora caters to my electic tastes; I've set up stations based on music by Laura Nyro, the Grateful Dead, Robin Trower, the B-52s, Black-eyed Peas and Sigur Rós, among others.)

The first photo was shot with my laptop camera, which required a bit of juggling, since I had to shoot over the shoulder to the painting behind me with the laptop in my palm.  This also explains the mediocre quality of the shot.  I shot the second and third with my Canon SD 780.  You'll note the initial block-in has much more vivid color than the second stage.  I am going for more accurate but still exciting color in the finished piece.  We'll see how it develops.



 

It was cold - only 10 degrees at night and barely above freezing in the day!  I was toasty in my studio, though.