I think the photo I based this new piece on was taken during a trip up the Eagle Creek Trail in the fall some time ago. I think it was the same hike that the painting below was based on. Although this may have been on the way to Angel's Rest. Either way, go hiking in the Columbia Gorge, you guys. You could fly to New Zealand or Moldavia or wherever, but this is in your back yard and it's just as breathtaking. With 100% fewer passports required.
Eagle Creek 1
Just one of those perfect hikes where every time we turned the corner I was instinctively reaching for my camera (Shut up, literalists. I know there is no innate reaching-for-camera instinct.)
Drew has been hoping that I would get out my palette knife again. He loves my last painting of the buffalo because it reminds him of his new favorite place on earth (Yellowstone National Park), but he really likes the paintings with lots of color slathered in ways that resemble our lives. And green. He wanted something green.
So I started with lots of green.
Dark beginnings
Once I pretty much laid a gesso cover of black and green, I could start the fun. LEAVES!
Here come the leaves
MORE LEAVES!
Almost there
Once I had a good layer of background leaves and popping-out foreground leaves, I needed a little middle ground to, um ground the view.
Now we're talking.
The canvas is 36 x 48. It will be dry and ready to varnish and put on display in a few months. It takes a good long time for these heavily globbed-on ones to dry. It's so big, I will have to hang it somewhere on the wall in the house during the drying time. It's a bad habit of mine to hang things on the wall and then forget at which point in the drying/varnishing I last left it. So maybe this blog post will be a good reminder for myself to take it down and "finish" it in July or so.
Also, back to my crowing about our backyard Gorge: please note that the waterfall in the background of this picture is a minor thing, where a smaller creek falls into a larger creek on the side of the minor dale we were hiking through. Not even sure it has a name, that's how many more awesome waterfalls there are in the Gorge. So.
A) Hike the Gorge.
B) Enjoy my painting.
C) Leaves!