Pacific Northwest Plein Air 2011 - My Return to the Columbia Gorgelife during wartime

Pacific Northwest Plein Air 2011 - My Return to the Columbia Gorge

I am back in California after spending a week in the Great Northwest of the U S of A. I went up to Hood River, Oregon last year to participate in the Pacific Northwest Plein Air event. I had so much fun last year that I decided to return again. I went to a few places that I went to last time to paint, but I also went to a few new areas I had not yet painted at.

Getting my obligatory painting of Mt. Hood out of the way, this was my first painting I did of the year. This was done in the morning. Like 7:30 am. This is a really popular area called Panorama Point, which overlooks much of the Hood River basin and its many wineries. This was a warm-up 6x8 quickie that took about 35 minutes.

After the orientation, I went down the highway to go down to Lost Lake, which is a very scenic river. Think mini-Tahoe, only with an iconic view of the mountain. I did two 9x12"s here to spend the day in the forest. A perfect day if you ask me.

Day 2: One of the "official" locations we painted at was Stevenson, Washington. It was a decent spot, but it felt too "easy." I'm not a big fan of popular tourist locations, because everything is laid out for you and every attempt to deviate from it feels forced. I still liked this painting because I feel like I got the impression of clouds breaking pretty successfully.

I skipped over the river to the Oneonta Gorge. It makes a very dramatic light/dark shape especially when photographed in black and white. To get to the waterfall after a 1-mile hike though, you have to climb this huge treacherous logjam. I consider myself somewhat adventurous, but I value my safety over such things. If I wasnt lugging a heavy backpack with valuable painting gear, I would chance it. Instead I stood in the creek and painted the ravine. I'm not sure if the sense of scale totally translates, but I didn't want to try faking some people for scale, and I didn't have my camera to shoot reference. Still, it's one of my favorite paintings of the week.

I finished the day at Eagle Creek. It's too narrow of a trail to paint from the trail itself, but I veered off into the creek to find this scene. The reflection of the evening light in the water turns it an orange-gold. Very dramatic. Absolutely lovely.

Day 3: I started out at the Mosier Plateau to find this view. Compositionally I like it but overall I feel it's lacking in an interesting focal point.

Ok. This one was a complete struggle the entire time. It was out-of-hand compositionally from the start, plus the values and colors were all wrong. After a while I decided to radically change my approach and mix gray into all of my colors. It sort of helped, but overall I wasn't too happy with it. I did like the trees on the left and some of the reflections in the foreground.

After the heat of the midday subsided I went out towards the Dalles and crossed the bridge to Horsethief Lake, one of my favorite places from last year. I like this painting as a study, but overall it's slightly simplistic. I am going to hold on to this one to do a larger more involved painting in the future. It's quite a fascinating place that deserves proper homage....

Day 4: The next day started off at the Gorge Crest Vineyards in Underwood, Washington. I wasn't too jazzed about painting the area. First of all, it has a lot of vineyards. I HATE painting vineyards, they are monotonous and a pain to paint. Also, the area is too "postcard", if you get what I mean. Sort of the same problem that Stevenson had. There was a cool bunch of trees cropping out from the hill that caught my attention. So I did a super-zoom into the view and composed it in a sort of typically-photographic way. I made it work.

I went down the road and found this view which was much more my style. This is a view of the town of Hood River. I changed the composition a bit to give a bit of "swing" into it to make sure you're kept in the picture. This is actually the unfinished version of the painting. I touched it up before bringing it to the gallery.

......and I finished it up with a bang! This one is by far my most impressive one of the week. I went back out to The Dalles, which has a great historic downtown with lots of cool architecture. One of the most iconic buildings is the home of Clock Tower Ales. I spent about 2.5 hours on this one. I made sure the perspective was working in the drawing before laying down the color. Had I known this one was gonna work, I would have took some progress shots. I actually did less under-drawing than you may expect. I did the usual jump into blocking in everything as quick as I could. Most of the drawing occurred after the block-in. I purposely kept it somewhat loose and sketchy because I knew if I tried to get tight, any mistake would be hugely apparent. I'm racing against time in everything I do outdoors, so in order to get everything to an acceptable degree of finish, sacrifices need to be made.

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If you are in the area and want to see the paintings in person, the Columbia Arts Council in Hood River is hosting the show.

http://www.columbiaarts.org/gallery/2011/09_11/pleinair_2011.html

Gallery Show & Opening Reception

September 2 - 25

"The gallery show opens on September 2 at the Columbia Art Gallery in Hood River and extends through September 25. Artworks created during the five-day Paint-Out will be available for purchase and selections of the writers’ works will be on display.

Opening reception on First Friday, September 2nd from 6 - 8pm. All are invited!