Shipton progressing

Shipton Spire

Photo by Tim Kemple. Alpinist 23

Sacred Valley

Painting these from a photo found in the April issue of NGM. I've spent some time in the Sacred Valley and I was taken by the storm clouds hovering in the top part of this image, the dark purpleish mountains in the background and the geometric patterns of the fields in the foreground, cleanly bissected by this crisp, cool road. I've painted two versions both on crappy "practice" paper. I just don't have the patience to spend time getting the fields correct in great details. I might try this one more time this weekend. But I also found a Shipton Spire image that is quite appealing, we'll see how much sleep L manages to get and energy I have left over to paint. I'm also hoping to get back to Bull Run Mtn to sketch the progression of the colors.

UPDATED: Atlas Shrugged? 'Outraged' Glaciologists Say Mappers Misrepresented Greenland Ice Melt - ScienceInsider

UPDATED: Atlas Shrugged? 'Outraged' Glaciologists Say Mappers Misrepresented Greenland Ice Melt - ScienceInsider

Bugaboos V.4

Plein Air

Escaped to Bull Run Mountain today. Up on the ridge looking West to
the Shenandoah ridge in the distance. Gray, diffuse light and an
infinite number of greens.

Bugaboos Take 3

Bugaboos take 2

Sloppy. No depth. But I like this sky.

Primary Sources

Mike Reyfman: Horseshoe Bend

Bugaboos

 

 I must confess that I have yet to visit the Bugaboos. This climbing Mecca in the Southern Selkirks of interior BC is a climber's paradise despite its reputation for rather bad weather. The traverse from the Bugs to Roger's pass being the Canadian equivalent to the Haute Route. The Fall Patagonia catalog has an image by my old Edge climbing gym workmate Rich Wheater on its cover which I've attempted to paint tonight. rich is a great photographer whose career I've been following since the mid 90's when I met i him in Vancouver, glad to see his work in such a prominent place.

I'll give this scene it a couple more tries as its a great image with beautiful lighting lots of nice rock textures, shadows, snow, scree, glaciers, all the things I love about the mountain environment that use to motivate me to try and map it accurately.


In the same catalog are some great Fred Beckey photos and a plug for a podcast by founder Yvon Chouinard (one of my climbing heroes) on his alpine  apprenticeship with Beckey. Also a great photo of the Vermilion cliffs from the Horseshoe bend on the Colorado near Page, one of my current mapping project (more on that in a forthcoming post). It's an amazing photo by Mike Reyfman that is as good as anything we'll be running in our pages. It's noticeable that Patagonia keeps putting out such great catalogs that keep inspiring me both to paint and to explore. Noticeable in that Black Diamond stopped last year to do so and that if it ain't facebook or twitter its considered useless. I guess the cynical in me thinks that the younger crowd more likely to be using the new media can't yet afford to buy too much at Patagonia, whereas the moneyed folks who can are still looking at print catalogs delivered to their doorsteps.

Limited palette

Reading Bob Wade on my way home. 3 colours: light red, cobalt blue,
raw sienna. Doing some mountain studies with a size 8 Rekab squirrel
quill.

Sierras.

Sierras: Mt Clarence King

Lake Superior Trail

My annual pre NACIS hike will be on the NW shore of Lake Superior this
year. 100 miles in 5 days from Cascade River SP to Silver Bay. Got
some 1"= 2 miles topo maps this week. Getting excited to be back in
the northern woods.

Lovely airbrush relief

Direct Painting

I've posted some of my experiments with direct painting and written
about how I like to paint this way. I happened upon a Charles Reid
page that discusses this approach. Glad to see this way of painting
encouraged, now to put his advice in practice when painting this way.

Grey Sunday

Sierras below Palisade Creek

 

Olympic Peninsula, Mt. Olympus

Monte Averau section

Friday's field trip.

Trying to decipher the complex geography bounding the Meakambut Sepik Basin territory in PNG required a trip to map central at LOC today. Got to look at some Australian 100k topos that seemed to have the geography correct but neither the place names nor the river names I needed. Nevertheless,
a very insightful visit.

When I got back I emailed the photog and got some GPS coordinates for two additional places I needed. Now I just need to track down the Eastern European anthropologist specializing in this
region, the SIL missionaries who have learned the local languages and the eccentric local contact who got us into this story. Hopefully one of them can figure out where these two remaining places are located and the confirm the extent of the Meakambut's territory.

Friday's paintings