Painting in Zion National Park - Part 5

The excellent weather continues in Zion National Park, and so we were up early again for breakfast and to make sandwiches for lunch.  Here, Trina mans the lunch counter while some of the others finish off breakfast.

We headed back to Court of the Patriarchs again.   (Did I mention this is one of my favorite places?)  When we went there the other afternoon, we found it rather warm with little shade; the cottonwoods still hadn't filled out enough to provide anything other than a diffuse shadow.  So, we decided to try it this morning.  We got there when the "court" was still in shadow, and sunlight was gradually creeping down the sides of the three Patriarchs.  We did some good painting, and Trina caught a turkey in full regalia with her camera.

Trina's Turkey

 Because the shadows do change so quickly on the cliffs, we decided to return to the "court" tomorrow morning to finish our first paintings of the day.  I like to sometimes split the painting (as well as my infinitives) over a couple of days; if the scene changes so much that you find you're working from memory, this is a good way to handle it.  The weather in the southwest is usually reliable enough that you can count on the same light at the same time of day.

Here's one I did finish:

Court of the Patriarchs, 9x12, oil - SOLD

We did our round of "show-and-tell" in the afternoon.  Here's my setup for showing both one of today's oil paintings plus yesterday's pastel (both are sold!)

This evening, we had our final group dinner at the Flying Monkey.  Although we have one more day of painting together, a couple of our friends will be leaving tomorrow.