Big fish: How to solve the biggest problems

Do You See Me?

I recently read the book "A River Lost: Life and Death of the Columbia" by Blaine Harden and was persuaded to enter an art show about the topic of the book, which was all the engineering projects that were done to the Columbia, with their resulting human and nature costs and consequences, the small benefits and the big losses. I was moved to try to give 'voice' to the inhabitants we rarely see outside of plastic-wrapped food packages—the salmonid poopulations that are hovering on the edge of extinction due to the consequences of the slowing of the river and the consequent increase in water temperatures, exacerbated by global warming.

When we view the Columbia River, we see many different types of work and play, but unless we’re actually fishing, we usually don’t see the salmon there. They are an inextricable part of the ecosystems of the entire Columbia watershed, feeding many of the peoples and the other animals, yet they are nearly invisible to us. This painting is to give viewers an up-close and personal view of what salmon look like in the river. It is based on a photo taken by Mark Conlin and published in Hakai magazine on the web.

Forest science studies show it was the fish spawning and becoming food for land mammals that provided the nutrients for the great forests; fish that used to come upriver in groups so dense "you could walk across the river on them," a perfect and seemingly inexhaustible food supply for the entire region, and this year the run was so small that fishing had to be closed months early. I keep wondering what it will take for us to mend the damage we've caused.

There was a great special on OPB this summer about two groups who were fighting over the "owls vs. loggers" dilemma who started spending happy hours together, drinking, becoming friends, and talking about each other's viewpoint, and wouldn't you know, they worked up a solution between them for how the loggers could do their harvesting and at the same time protect the owl populations.

Right now we have separate populations arguing their needs are the greatest, the most important, and that others' needs should be set aside. Maybe what we need is to argue instead that all the interests are important, and start working on ways to cooperate to meet everyone's needs. As soon as we recognize the equal importance of all the things we want the river to do, we can stop wasting time defending our interests as "the right ones" and start working on balancing solutions that allow us to do all those things--maybe in different ways--so that all those goals are achieved.

A new series with lots of trees and foliage

 

Mt Adams Early Light

Some friends asked me for paintings from three different photos they took on a July 4th camping trip, taken on different days and at different times of the day. I love Mt. Adams so I was happy to take the challenge. I took some liberties with the composition, bringing the mountain more forward (and larger) behind the middleground, and also making sure the dead branch was the same in each painting, as it was a feature for them. After taking the photos they noticed that it was always there even though the locations were different, so they asked me to put it in.

Mt Adams Sunny Day

The most interesting part for me was the difference in the lighting and how to capture that. The foliage in the sunny photo was a real test of patience, as the mix of white oaks, pine, and firs created a tapestry of greens and leaf outlines and textures. I didn't want any more detail than I needed to convey the mixed forest. I ended up blocking in the dominant color shapes before I worked on the detail. That and trying to match the subtle gradients in the sky colors took twice as long as I expect. The blues in the sunny photo were so close I literally couldn't tell if I had the right color or not as I was putting on the wet paint, and I had to wait till it dried and darkened to see if it was right. There was a very slight hue difference between the mountain and the sky, that also helped me get the colors mixed up occasionally. There was a lot of repainting on that one.

Mt Adams Sunset

The sunset picture gave me some good practice with shadow colors. As I've found before, shadow colors in the afternoon and evening are frequently warmer than one would think. All in all, it was a fantastic practice in drawing, painting the pine trees, and in color mixing. And I still love Mt. Adams.

Learning to paint clouds

I made a commitment to try to learn how to paint clouds this winter. I'd like to get to the point where I know them well enough to be able to invent realistic looking clouds. My goal is to finish ten small cloud paintings. I've just finished my third and have started my fourth. I forgot to put the first two up here, so here they are. Both are of Spring clouds in the Columbia Gorge, looking north from the Oregon side of the Columbia River, in the vicinity of Tom McCall Preserve, west of Hood River.

It's all about the Composition

Goat Mountain Sunset

I've spent an awful lot of years learning to get the colors I want in a painting, and I'm getting good enough results now—not necessarily easily, but eventually—so it's time to get on to the next part of learning to paint: the paramount importance of composition, and how to create a good one. I take thousands of photos a year, and maybe 1% of them I recognize instantly as having a great composition. I've watched other people do value studies, and I've done some myself, but only a couple days ago, as I was contemplating what to paint next, I finally understood that it's during the value study that you adjust the composition until it acquires what it needs to attract attention. I always end up trying to fix the composition in the last third or less of the painting process, because I've been so focused the whole time on getting the colors right.

I frequently repeat the saying I read long ago, that "Painting isn't hard—you just have to get the right colors in the right places." So I was focusing on the right colors; now it's time to focus on the right placing.

I did a monotone value study for this last painting as the first stage, and I think it's been this experience that's made me fully absorb the process, and be able to think about it clearly. The study looked like this:

Then when I started painting over it, I first went with a blue violet palette, looking for something dramatic.

I decided I didn't really like that, and shifted more towards aqua hues, as I kept reworking the shapes and adding details, until I had the underpainting finalized.

And then I finished it, using a new trick to make sure I was capturing the composition that attracted me to the photo in the first place. I like to use my iPad as my color source now, but looking at an image that large (anything bigger than 5" on the short side) makes it really difficult to see the larger shapes—my brain just gets lost in the detail. So I print up a small image of the reference, no more than 4" on the long side, and tape it to the easel post right above the painting. When I stand back 8-10', I can easily compare the shapes in the painting to the shapes in the photo, and see how to fix things if I've gone wrong. Ta-da!

This view is not in the Columbia Gorge, it's from near Cornelius, at the edge of the coastal range.