Painting and Paddling the Kickapoo River

   Now that the flood waters have receded and the mud has settled, the Kickapoo runs clear. A few days ago I was thinking that there was only one day of paddling for me this year. Thinking of paddling inspired a look at photos I'd taken of the river, between Bridges 8 and 14. Each time the river is different. My favorite time to be on the water is just at daylight or as twilight turns to night.

Moonlight on the Kickapoo

   My favorite paddling trips were done for 'bat monitoring'. A full moon night, a flat bottom boat, the amazing and wonderful Bat Monitor ( which gives us both the bat calls in a frequency humans can hear, and a visual pattern of their calls) and a few friends with canoes floating into the magical dark tunnel carried us into a river journey hard to imagine during daylight hours.

   The water was dark, the banks were black, the cliffs were empty vaults of anything we could imagine. Then we would round a bend in the river and the rising moon poured liquid white light into everything that was a moment ago invisible in darkness. One moment we could see nothing but blackness, the next, nothing but light.

   Each time we followed the river's bends into and away from the direction of the moon, we glided from total dark to blinding light.

   During the day, light and how it plays on water and rock, leaf and sand, is much of what I notice when on the river. But color instead of dark and light contrast are daytime's priorities. The cliffs along the river are amazing for the variations in color. Moss and lichen are the most of the source of colors, and they change all the time. One day brilliant red and green covers a large flat cliff close to the water, but later that will be all gone. The colors will be muted greys, browns and greens.

   Here is my November meditation on our beautiful Kickapoo river cliffs. The blues are lichen on the rock; that's really their color.

Near Bridge 8  Acrylic on canvas 9" x 12"

   Now that winter is here, the ice caves are forming and the valley's water puts on a different display, silver, white, grey, making a different world than water makes in the summer. It's fun to go outside and watch the ice form, then come inside and paint the greens, blues and reds of summer.

   Please share this blog if you've enjoyed visiting. Thanks!

   Wishing you happy trails in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, all year round.

Susan

Changing Weather - Rogers Pass

                                              Changing Weather - Rogers Pass
                                                      Acrylic 12" x 24"

     Imagine 15 degrees below zero, more or less, a clear bright blue sky, blindingly bright snow and your friends and you are slowly moving up the mountain side on skis. The morning is spent in a long climb and your pack full of avalanche gear and all the necessities of back country winter travel is feeling heavy. But the top of the climb is near. Suddenly, the rising ground ends and a vast space opens up; clouds and snowfields drop away below your feet and fade into the distance. Rising over the chasm a mass of dark cloud blocks the sun. Everything below is shadowed purples and blues. Mist and cloud fall down the distant canyons into what seems like bottomless space. The wind picks up. Standing on the col, you are on the edge between two worlds; the bright, quiet sunlit fields of snowy slopes falling away behind and ahead, the low roar of wind and darkening storm.
    That long, cold ski up the mountain brought my friends and I onto the col where we'd planned to rest and eat our lunch before going onto the Illecillewaet Glacier  but the unexpected drama of this view changed our plans. We simply had to stand around for a few minutes and watch the weather roll in. Of course, then our lunch was shortened and the day's plans modified so we could get back down to a lower altitude before bad weather trapped us too far from the hut.
    This view remains one of my favorite of all the spectacular mountain views I was so fortunate to know skiing in the Canadian backcountry. I always knew it was a painting, and finally it is!
     If you ski, here's some information on this spectacular Canadian backcountry destination:
Rogers Pass

Rogers Pass ski routes

   While doing this painting, our Wisconsin snow has turned to rain, the grass is greening, birds sing and winter is finished for this year. But I'm inspired about painting snow so have another painting started of the Blanket Glacier area in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia.
   Thanks for checking in; please share this blog, and leave a comment anytime!
Susan
   
                                                 

 

Painting Snow Hoodoos

Snow Hoodoos Near Balu Pass

    This is the second painting, just finished, from our Canadian backcountry travels, featuring one of my favorite things - hoodoos. Some of you may know hoodoos from the deserts and 'badlands' of our western states but snow can also make more temporary hoodoos.   
   Alberta has famous hoodoos out in the dry prairies near Drumheller. Travel west through the mountains, past the front ranges and into British Columbia where the snow is usually deep, to find snow hoodoos. I have seen hoodoos in Banff National Park, near the town of Banff, but deeper into British Columbia hoodoos are bigger and more easily found. They form over trees or rock and often have a mushroom shape where protected from wind.
   'Snow Hoodoos Near Balu Pass' takes us into the Rogers Pass backcountry. Rogers Pass area in the Selkirk mountains is well known to Canadian skiers for steep, avalanche filled valleys, spectacular scenery and challenging skiing.Snow here can be several meters deep and the sheltered valleys allow hoodoos to form.
   These hoodoos formed over rock outcroppings. They are 6-8 feet wide (2-3meters). Sometimes there is enough space under one to stand up inside it. Carefully!
   Beyond the hoodoos and out of sight in the painting is Balu Pass, a lovely open ridge surrounded by higher peaks with lots of open space for an afternoon of telemarking.

   This painting was started by doing a color palette to decide the basic range of colors and values.
Ken DeWaard , I'm thinking about values!

 
   Values from dark to light were made for three blues; cerulean, cobalt and ultramarine. Then I made samples of these colors with black added.

   Early stage of the painting I try to get the basic shapes and values. Still not very efficient with that so often redo it several times.

   What seems like a simple, one color snowfield quickly turns into a complex mix of shapes and values. Trying to keep it simple here but those details creep in all too soon. At this point I forgot about taking pictures for a while. I'll try to get more of each stage of development on another painting. This has been changed and changed again, before ending up as below. My photos don't show the values completely.

   

Deep snow, higher altitude and dry clear air can cause snow to intensify colors and seem luminous. The photo does not quite capture that so I'll keep trying to get better pictures.

 
 Now I'm doing sketches for figures, and thinking about where they will be placed in the scene. One of the pleasures of these paintings is the figures in them are my friends. This painting features Bob and Fritz. I make sketches of skiers in different positions, using a photo reference for how their clothes or packs look. My photos taken while negotiating trails and carrying a heavy pack are quickly snapped and oriented on the large expanse of scenery so figures tend to be small, dark and indistinct against the brilliant white surroundings and don't offer much information for later use.
   Once the figures are in the scene they bring perspective and scale to the long range view and the painting is finished. For now. It goes into hiding for a couple weeks, then I'll look at it again and check for anything that needs adjusting.
 

Snow Hoodoos Near Balu Pass 20"x16"

   Thanks for checking in. I appreciate comments! If you like this blog, please share with your friends and on FaceBook or other social media. Then, go outside and enjoy the day.