Zion Day 7

Again it was a clear day and the sun usually starts to hit the mountain at about 7am or shortly after. I drink my coffee watching the sun creep down the face of the cliff.

Today the herd of Deer that live around this part of the canyon decided to graze in the meadow in front of the Grotto.

   

There are 13 in this little herd and there is definitely an “alpha buck”. He would stand and watch most of the time as the others grazed. They don’t seem to be jumpy, because a Park vehicle drove by within five feet of three of them and they didn’t even flinch.

I got some great shots of the group of them so I will see if I can put them in a painting.

Yesterday afternoon I took a break from the exhausting painting regimen to go for a walk in the park. I decided to go see the “Emerald Pools” since the trailhead is from the Lodge and I had never been on this trail.

The trail is very easy and it leads to three levels of pools that fall into each other, with the source of water being a waterfall from the top of the canyon. The sun was not shining on the pools because of the time of the year so I couldn’t see any emeralds in the water.

  This is the middle pool.

This is the source, above the upper pool.

It was a great little trek to gain some perspective of the Park. I had been traversing the bottom of the canyon, mostly in my truck, so it was a chance to see the Park from a higher viewpoint, away from the road, and to stretch my legs. It was like hitting “refresh” on the computer, reloading the scene and starting again. I started today with vigor. ViVi calls that “feeding the artist”, and I must say it certainly satisfies the appetite.

The painting I started yesterday is still a bit wet but I will fill in the sky and start the process moving. The paint is taking longer to dry than I am used to, I think it’s the double-primed linen, it isn’t absorbing the paint like the canvas I usually paint on.

I like to paint from front to back so I start with the sky. I like very smooth skies in my painting so this means lots of blending. The under-painting is still not dry so getting the sky as smooth as I want took a lot of gentle blending with a sable brush, a lot of blending. The blue is somewhat transparent also, so it will show any blemishes or thinness of paint, more blending, blending. No visible strokes. (that’s for you Cecilia and Darnell).

 Sky blended in.

I work dark to light also, I like to get my dark values down and somewhat dry and then paint the lighter values on top. Given that the paint is staying wet longer, I will lay in my darks over the entire painting and let them start drying, so they will be ready when I get to them.

  Darks layed in.

The electricity went out this afternoon. Evidently it was county-wide and they repaired it within thirty minutes. That would have been a chilly night.

It's supposed to be sunny for the next week so I should get some consistant light at the same time of day, each day. I will try to paint some outdoors.
G'nght.