RAPIDS AT CARTER BRIDGE

Today I take my class to Carter Bridge Rapids on the Clackamas River. The weatherman promised no rain, so I didn’t bring my tent. There are other challenges, though. Footing under the bridge where we are painting is extremely rocky and rough. Walking up and down the boulders is difficult for all of us, and makes it difficult to teach. I can see that not only do I have to consider weather, teaching topic, driving distance, walking distance, restrooms, and compositional elements, but I must include footing as well. Luckily, everyone is careful walking around and we meet the challenge unscathed.
This rapids is one of my favorite painting subjects. It offers a variety of approaches, zooming in to one of the spills, filling the page with the falls, or even pulling back to show the mountain in the background. I love the basalt cliffs and the hints of warms in the rocks. They work against the green of the water with an energetic palette. Here’s my painting. The foreground rocks need some work. Later. Climbing on these rocks is tiring.
The river valley funnels wind under the bridge. Here it is, a fine June day, and we are all in jackets. Next to my painting spot, a tire swing suggests a swim in the cool green water. Not today, thanks.

GNARLY MAPLE

Today I paint with my friend, Irene. She has some new acrylics she wants to try out, and suggests my backyard. It is pleasant out on the deck, with scattered gray light and shade in the wooded back.
These old maples are a joy to paint. They have lived full and richly intertwined lives, their old burls harboring mosses, ferns, and insects. I love looking at the varied colors of the mosses. I wish I could say we painted to the sound of birds, but today someone in the neighborhood was running a power saw.
Here is a portrait of one old geezer. When I bring the painting indoors, it is almost black, a testament to the changeability of oil in different lighting. It is going to need a home with a spotlight.

RAIN CLOUDS MOVING EAST

My class is meeting me at Vista House on Crown Point. The forecast is for a shower, then clearing to just cloudy. As I drive up to the point, it is raining. We decide to paint there anyway. The scene is full of lovely atmosphere, and the clouds are constantly changing. I set up my show tent and we are covered and comfy while we paint in the rain. The only thing that would make this better would be no puddling in the dips of the tent. I push the water out, only to have it pour straight down on my hat.

Clouds drift up the valley, sending tendrils down along the gulleys. Landmarks come and go in the mist. It’s an exercise in freezing shapes on the canvas. Just like “don’t chase the light,” the mantra becomes, “Don’t chase the clouds.”

The tent is a success, and we have a grand time painting the WEATHER. (The curious corrugated effect in the center of this picture is from my panel carrying box. I think I’ll leave it. It kind of looks like rain.)

PATH BY THE RIVER

Down to warmer climes where the trees are in leaf. I spend a lovely two hours painting by the salmon river. The water is hypnotic and a familiar painting subject, and I have a wonderful time painting it. But all these leaves! I keep remembering what I tell students: simplify the masses. I am having trouble doing just that. Maybe I need to spend more time painting greenery.

Rick drives out from home to join me for a hike in the woods along the river, a perfect cap to the day. Blooms hidden among the greenery, and even at eye level. Yellow violets, spring beauty, oxalis, bleeding hearts, corydalis with spikes in various stages of development.

When I get the painting home, it has changed dramatically. The big trees on the right are needlessly massive and heavy and the greens have all shifted into muck. I think I’ll put this one down to enjoying the painting experience. A friend of mine says put up the bad ones too. I’ll give it a try this once.

SUNRISE MISTS

4:30 AM. The sky is barely lightening. This is the right time to get up to paint the sunrise. On the mountain, the sky is more light. Already, a glow has lit the haze below me. Most enchanting are the mists in the valleys. It is too dark outside to see my paint. Inside the van, the interior light is just enough. I am ready for summer and warmer weather for painting. But for now, I stay inside.

The light on the horizon makes a straightened rainbow in the haze: red, orange, yellow, green, blue. I wish I had put out cad green light, but mix my green instead. As the sun approaches the horizon, more color dapples the mist. I finish my painting, and continue to watch as colors shift and brighten across the landscape. A faint rosey glow lights the snowfield atop Mt. Hood. Jefferson to the south is as distinctly pink as it was when I painted it at sunset, although in reverse profile. Once again, I am deeply thankful for this pageant.

SUMMIT

After getting up at 5 AM, and despite a nap, I am tired. I decide to make my sunset painting early, before the actual sunset. It will be interesting to watch the shadow patterns on the mountain change as the light falls. I have two small canvases left. Zooming in on the summit, I look for changes in color in the shadow and light on the snowfields. Fatigue sets in. I find myself painting automatically, unable to think the process through. I paint anyway.

The ski area that was so busy during the day is closing down for the night. My parking area is almost empty. The sunlight on the mountain warms, purples, and narrows to a small slanting shape. I chase the shadows down the mountainside. Mount Hood is going to sleep. Soon, so will I.

LIFE PAST

I loved the twisted shapes of this old tree. It was easy to get to from my car parked at the “road closed” sign. The whole time we were painting the tree, people kept driving up to the end of the road, and walking out on the snow, as if they couldn’t quite believe that it was closed. I too wished it weren’t closed, and I had more choices of painting spots.

MT HOOD LOOMING

From the skiers’ parking lot, we hiked up the corn snow to the first bare patch on the mountain. From here, the peak is hunkered down, it shoulders rising around us with blinding snow. Sunglasses, or no sunglasses? Looking at my paints with sunglasses on, I decided that the colors were invisible. A hat is going to have to do. We paint the various colors of snow, finding variety despite the lack of shadows. The trees are a welcome break to all that white. And of course, the cobalt sky, which is gradually dotting with clouds. (I painted it before the clouds came.) Can a mountain loom on a 4 by 6 panel?

SUNRISE IMMINENT

Yesterday I tried to get up to paint the sunrise. 5:30 I thought would do it, and that is only a half-hour earlier than I’ve been getting up. But at 5:30 I looked out and the sky was already light. I’d planned it too late. It was shamefully easy to talk myself back into bed.

This morning I try 5:00. Again the sky is light, but not so awfully light. As I’m headed for the bathroom, I consider talking myself out of it, but there are my clothes on the counter and somehow I put them on. I am out the door in ten minutes. When I arrive, the show is already going. I am glad that my paint is still out from yesterday. I shove my paint box on to the car seat, put up a small canvas, and begin to paint.

It is quiet, dead quiet here in the parking lot. Up the mountain I can see the lights of the grooming machines at work. There are a lot of cars in the lot for so early a time. Did they all get up at 5? It seems a herculean feat to me.

JEFF DRESSED IN PINK

Trails on the mountain are stiff and jumbled with snow, so I walk the streets of Government Camp. I head uphill, enjoying the mountain cabins that fill the little village. Snow still blankets the ground, though the streets are bare. Water flows somewhere under the snow, the result of a warm day.

There has been a lot of plowing in this town. Heaps of snow make sedimentary cliffs beside driveways and streets. At the ends of steep roofs, snow has slid into mountainous piles. Three to six feet of dirty pockmarked snow fills most front yards. People here adapt. One house had a clear driveway, six feet of snow in the front yard, and as if worshiping the sun on a raised deck, lawn chairs perched on the top of the snow.

After my walk, I head up the mountain to paint the sunset. Remembering the show at my back last night, I face south toward Mt. Jefferson.

SNOWFIELDS AT NOON

My class and I meet up at White River. The parking lot is like a heat radiator, warming us from the feet up. We have been studying the multiple colors of white, so we have come here to observe them. Because it’s so near noon, the variations are subtle, and there are no real shadows. Not the best time to paint, but we’re here now, so...

A crow or raven flies over with the same whish whish I heard yesterday. This time I am not expecting a condor. We also hear varied thrush calling. I missed them in West Linn this year.

My whites are nearly done. I look the painting over. I am tempted to lighten them, they seem to have so much color, but I know that when I get the painting indoors the yellow will be less intense. I bring it in, and sure enough, the yellows are just about right. Compensating for color change in different lighting conditions is still difficult.

TWO TREES, LIVING ON THE EDGE

Conditions are tough, up here at Timberline. It’s the end of May, and it’s still quite snowy, and looks like it plans to be for a good long while yet. Even on this balmy day, a stiff breeze is dropping down the mountain, carrying air chilled by the snowfields. I have set up beside my car, to stay as much out of the wind as possible. It may be ten degrees warmer on this side of the car.There is a lot to paint. Every part of this scene is full of color and shape and complexity. I try to narrow my focus, telling enough, but just enough. Even so, the painting takes longer that my back is happy about.I hear a whish, whish, whish overhead, and look up, expecting to see perhaps some mechanical flying machine, or at the very least, a condor. It is a crow, or a raven. This is puzzling. I’m told that owls have particular feathers at the front of their wings that keep them from making sound in flight. Sound in flight? I have never, sitting on my back deck in the afternoon, heard the sound of a bird’s wings. Even the gang (and I do mean gang) of neighborhood crows seem to limit their noise to a lot of raucous argument. Perhaps the sound of their wings is masked by suburban background noise. Standing here in the parking lot, mountain on one side of me, I am in a sound bowl. I can hear the clink of ski gear up the mountain and out of sight. Now and then a car door slams. I hear a comment, from far across the parking lot, about the lady who is painting under an umbrella. I suppose it’s no wonder that I can hear birds winging by.

MT HOOD SUNSET

The moisture in the air in the late afternoon promise an interesting sunset, so I drive up to Timberline. The shadows on Mt. Hood, long and complex, lengthen by the minute. Patches of glowing snow darken and turn to purple. Only one long slope and a few glints on the top shine brightly gold, then orange. A few dispersed contrail clouds pick up the last of the sunlight. I finish my painting, then turn around to find a stunning violet sky at my back. Ah, what we miss when we focus too narrowly on one thing!

TIMBERLINE SUNRISE

Miraculously, I am out of bed in time for another sunrise. Consider going to someplace new, like Trillium Lake, but decide that Timberline is closer, and the sunrise won’t be the same anyway. The van knows the way.

The sunrise is, indeed, quite different from yesterday. It reminds me of my resolve, made while in Hawaii, to walk down to the river every non-rainy day for the sunset. (And have I done that? Noooo.)

This time, I set my colors a bit earlier in the show. I am painting a very small canvas, so I zoom in on the golden glow just above the ridge. Put the colors down with a certain intensity, trying to compensate for the lack of light in the van. The painting comes together quickly.

Once my painting is finished, I pull out the camera for the rest of the show, drive to a few new viewpoints, and capture some variety. Even the side of the sky away from the sun has subtle and exciting color play. I am a confirmed sunrise lover. (As long as they aren’t too early.)

TIMBERLINE SUNRISE

Now that the days are shorter, sunrise isn’t so ridiculously early. I set the cell phone for 6:15 and go to bed early. I dream that it has snowed three feet and I can’t get out of the driveway. About 5:30 I wake up for good. Snuggle in bed for a little longer, then dress, grab some fruit, and head out the door as the cell phone alarm goes off. It takes only 10 minutes to get to Timberline Lodge.

The air is still and blue. Only a faint light in the east shows where the sun will probably rise. It is in two spots split by clouds, so I go eeney-meeny-miney-moe to pick which part of the sky to compose around. I set up quickly. The nice thing about sunrises (as opposed to sunsets), is that you set up your paints and get everything ready for the show, then the show happens and you paint quickly, then you have lots of light with which to finish up. Today, I begin painting so early that I can hardly see the colors I have mixed. As the sun slips above the horizon, my colors say, surprise!

Bonnie arrives, and I teach her stuff about color mixing. After lunch, we go up to Timberline and set up for a view of Mt. Adams. As we paint, the wind gets stronger and colder. We make a few color notes, then pack up our paints to finish tomorrow in the cabin. (Painting on previous day's post.)

TIMBERLINE AFTERNOON

(Afternoon painting, done another day)


I drive to the arts cabin and meet Betsy, who helps me settle in. It’s a lovely, homey building, with a collection of old furniture and space for painting in the living room. Artists who come here to teach have gifted the house with paintings; I am surrounded by the work of friends and acquaintances. What a treat to use this cabin as a base for painting and classes.

There is still some daylight, but the clouds have socked in the cabin. I set up an easel to paint a group of trees in the last hour of daylight. Before I begin, a phone call from Rick tells me that he has a clear view of Mt. Hood from Portland. It’s all in the point of view, so I resolve to move mine up in elevation. I drive to Timberline.

I am in a sea of clouds, tops glowing pink with the remaining sunlight. Across the mountain, long, sweeping scarves of shadow undulate across the ridges. I photograph trees that seem sculpted for the purpose. By the time I return to the cabin with my precious photos, the daylight is gone. Time is finite, and I have traded mine. For today, I am content.