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Tag: Jane Chapin

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Above Cody on the South Fork

One of the things I wish I had time to paint this week.

Last year Jane Chapin sent me a video of a ranch hand chasing a grizzly. “Get out of here, bear!” he kept shouting, moving fast along with his blue-heeler behind the scurrying bear. I assumed the man was on horseback, but today he told me he’d been on foot. He was doctoring an injured calf when the bear showed up. That took guts, but what else could he do?

This young man has the dapper mustache of a 19th century derring-do on a surprisingly young face. “Are the bears hibernating now?” I asked him.

“They never truly hibernate,” he told me. I guess that’s a myth they tell easterners to keep us visiting Yellowstone National Park in winter.

White out conditions above Cody, WY. Sometimes being a cowboy sounds romantic; other times it just seems like hard, cold work.

Monday night, he told me, a grizzly was nosing around the garage where two mule deer are dressed and hanging (he’s also gotten an elk this year). How did he know? “Grizzlies smell like really strong wet dog.”

Hunters in the Snow, not the Pieter Bruegel the Elder version.

Are brown bears and grizzly bears the same?

I always thought so, but apparently grizzlies are a subspecies of brown bears, which exist in temperate regions worldwide. But North American brown bear means grizzly.

I’m along the south fork of the Shoshone River for a few days before I head east again. Yesterday’s storm was the first snow I’ve encountered this season. It was a wild temperature swing from the heat of Sedona last weekend.

The temperature here at the ranch is always lower than it is in Cody proper. Last winter when I was here the temperatures dipped below -30° F. That week, I saw wolves loping across the meadow; this week, a coyote sped across the road in front of me. Down by the river yesterday, I surprised a golden eagle.

It was cold and damp and oh, so beautiful along the South Fork of the Shoshone River.

We took a slow, slippery drive up the South Fork of the Shoshone River looking for bighorn sheep. They’re always elusive, but it’s elk season and hunters have perhaps pushed them farther up the slopes. A string of mules waited patiently near the river.

As dusk began to fall and the snow continued to blow, three of Jane’s horses made a rather silly break toward the ranch road. The youngest, Roscoe, reminds me powerfully of my last horse, who could be sly. As Roscoe thundered up behind Jane, my heart was in my throat. At the last moment, she swung under the split rail fence.

This is a telephoto shot because Jimmy (the guy with the long ears) is way far away.

Sadly, I only saw Jane’s donkey (who is a middle-aged gentleman) from a distance. He’s hanging out by the river with new pals. “Jimmy, Jimmy Stewart!” I called vainly into the wind.

Yes, I am tempted to paint with every twist in the road, and my kit is right here. However, my time here is fleeting, and new experiences and friendship are both precious. I can always paint tomorrow.

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If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you, too?

The Whole Enchilada, 12X16, oil on archival canvas, $1159 unframed.

Yesterday marked four years since we got home from our ill-starred trip to Patagonia, which just happened to coincide with the start of COVID. I’ve written about it starting here, and I don’t need to retell that awful and awesome adventure. However, struggling through spring snow yesterday reminded me of how anxious we were to leave El ChaltĂ©n as winter closed in on the southern Andes.

The Whole Enchilada was my second to last painting before we finally left the glaciers. My final one will remain forever unfinished because I was too ill with giardiasis to paint. Ironically, it’s taken four years to entirely clear that from my system, too. Last month, my PCP thought it was just possible that my gut symptoms were caused by my old parasite friend. Thankfully, it seems she was right. That’s one bad memory of Argentina that I can finally put to sleep.

This painting was done in the stupidest possible manner. After two weeks of looking at glaciers from river valleys, Jane Chapin, Kellee Mayfield and I climbed a mountain to get a different view. Being sensible outdoorswomen, we hared straight up the steep hillside. None of us had rappelling gear and we were suddenly in a maze of granite ridges.

Just a short break among the endless switchbacks. We’re there somewhere.

“If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you, too?” is a famous parental question. Well, duh. Yes, obviously. Faced with a choice of being left behind or staying with your buddies, you soldier on. The good news is that none of us fell, even descending into a wicked headwind. The view from up above was sublime. We hunched down behind boulders as the wind increased in force. All of us painted well, although there can be no detail when your easel is bucketing in a fierce wind. It’s also hard to carry a wet canvas down a cliff when you’re worried about falling.

Argentina is a large and beautiful country, but the flip side is that I saw very little of it on our ill-fated trip. Will I go back? Certainly, especially if I can talk Jane into it. But not tomorrow, for sure. This winter has lasted long enough.

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Sketching vs. drawing

Little Village, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, 435.00 framed includes shipping and handling within continental US. This is a field sketch.

“What’s the difference between sketching and drawing?” a student asked me. Since we were drinking cappuccino and watching a spectacular sunrise together, I asked my friend and fellow artist  Jane Chapin.

“Sketching is a thumbnail, while drawing is more careful and measured,” she said. “In sketching you’re trying to work things out in your mind; in drawing, you already have your idea.”

The simplest of thumbnails is still a sketch.

Both sketching and drawing use the same essential tools: pencil, charcoal, ink, and pastel. However, these materials can be deployed in an almost infinite variety of ways.

The terms sketching and drawing are often used interchangeably, but they have slightly different meanings. These depend on the work’s purpose, level of finishing, and technique. There’s no hard line separating one from the other; that is subjective. Neither one is inherently better or more valuable than the other.

This is a drawing even though it’s in my sketchbook.

For me, sketches are quick, rough, informal representations of something I want to capture on the fly. Or, they’re experiments in design and composition before I commit myself to painting. Sometimes I use sketches to explain ideas. I’ve even sketched out ideas of things I want to build. (That’s almost always a mistake; I’d make far fewer errors if I drew plans with a ruler.)

Then there are the stupid cartoons I sometimes make for my grandkids. But whatever their purpose, sketches are immediate and without extraneous detail. They’re loose and imprecise.

This is an idea for a painting reduced to its simplest elements and value steps; it’s a value drawing, but I’d call it more of a plan.

In painting practice, sketches capture basic shapes and values without focusing on fine details. The term value drawing is really a misnomer; most of the time what we really mean is a value sketch. That’s especially true when we’re making thumbnails.

Then there is the field sketch, which is the painting equivalent of a pencil sketch. It is invariably on the small side. It can be used to record color notes or light effects, but it’s as different from a highly-finished painting as a pencil sketch is from a highly-detailed drawing.

This is a character sketch for a larger studio painting. Those old Italian aunts!

Drawings involve more careful measurement with thought-out perspective and proportion. They are usually more detailed, with a greater emphasis on accurate representation. Drawings can include subtle modeling, refined linework and intricacy. They can be highly complex. However, sometimes they’re starkly simplified; detail is deleted in favor of abstraction. The drawings of Vasily Kandinsky are just one example.

Sketches are generally done with quick strokes, using pencils, charcoal, or ink. No great emphasis is placed on sophistication or finish; instead, a sketch is all about spontaneity and intuition. Drawings, in contrast, are more cerebral, as is the case with mechanical and architectural renderings. Drawings are more likely to be made as final works of art, and are often done with better materials.

This is another drawing that started out as a few diagonal lines in my sketchbook. I define it as a drawing because it’s fully realized.

Of course, sometimes sketches evolve into drawings, as happens to me when I draw in church. I start with a germ of an idea, often nothing more than the intersection of two or three lines. As my subconscious mind drives my pencil, my conscious mind begins to see threads and connections. I erase, redraw, erase some more, and in less than an hour I have a finished drawing. It helps that my sketchbook is highly-erasable Bristol; I have endless opportunities for revision.

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Old Wyoming Homestead

Old Wyoming Homestead, 9×12, oil on archival canvasboard, $696 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“I’m not painting out there,” Jane Chapin announced with finality. “If you want to, you can do it, but I am not joining you.”

I have form at dragging her out to paint in winter, but this trip I had no such plans. It dropped below 0° F last night here above Cody, WY, and predictions are for it to drop below -20° F by the weekend. That’s the kind of weather that freezes the hair inside your nostrils and causes spare parts to drop off.

I painted Old Wyoming Homestead, above, when Jane and her husband had just bought Bull Creek Ranch. It wasn’t until this visit that I realized that the structure is in fact a three-hole outhouse.

The territorial house, c. 1915.

The real territorial house, above, was built in 1915. When Jane and Roger bought the ranch, the territorial house was at a crossroads. Much more time weathering and it would collapse. They have spent the intervening years rebuilding it. They’ve made a few refinements, the most notable being electric lights. It still has a wood stove and no indoor plumbing.

“What are you planning on doing with it?” Roger was asked. He shrugged and said he didn’t know.

The old log barns are not doing as well.

Bull Creek, which runs behind the outhouse, is still a pass for grizzlies (who are hopefully sleeping in this wicked cold weather). There are still wolves here, and mountain lions, drawn by the mule deer, hares, and other easy prey. Domestic pets can’t roam or they’re supper.

Imagine living on this hillside on a cold autumn evening, the wind whistling down the pass. Your children need the privy, but you’re not sending them there alone. It’s no wonder that the outhouse has three holes; it was a family affair.

Note the toddler-sized potty chair on the right.

The territorial house has been my dream home since I first laid eyes on it. Roger and Jane are to be commended for stabilizing it for future generations. This is a part of our history that, once lost, can never be reclaimed.

The rest of this post will be photos of the surrounding landscape. Enjoy!

This is the original cabin. The territorial house was built in front of it.
The beautiful, spikey topography is tough going even on foot.
View across the outhouse and Bull Creek.
This is the root cellar; it’s intact and could be used tomorrow.

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