Wednesday

We did go skiing yesterday, but at Snowbird. They have some killer views of the Salt Lake valley that I wanted then to see. The wind was howling with this new front moving in and they had the tram closed because of the 80 mile an hour winds at the top. We still took the chair lift to the top just to experience it. Getting down for there was another problem. The steep, wide open slope was covered in an nice icy layer. With all the warm weather we had and cold nights the snow had really set up with a dense icy layer. Lottie explained that she was maybe a little out of her league, what else could I say it was too late, we were already at the top with no other way down. As it turns out they did just fine and we were down in no time.

Most of their time they were catching their breaths from the altitude difference.

Today they are up at Alta with Karin.....so I'm thinking by the end of the week their legs will be screaming. They rented equipment until Friday, so they want to use the skis everyday.

I worked more on the boat painting, added the boat in the lower right and lightened up more on the water. It still needs some adjustments here and there, which I'll try to get to tomorrow.

I'm sorry to hear that Walt Horton died, he did these really cool sculpture pieces. So if you get a chance just Google his name and you'll find his web site and the work that he did.

Right now I need to get to the store and make a lasagna for the southern Utah trip. We will be staying for several days in Bluff, Utah before the hike into Grand Gulch, so we have four meals to come up with. The Strayer family will do two and we will do the rest. If I make the lasagna now I can freeze it and keep it until next week.

Richard Boyer

Monday, March 29

Saturday night we had visitors fly in from Sweden. After the usual 16 hour flight, Lottie an old school friend of Karin's arrived with her two boys for some spring break skiing and southern Utah exploration. She has known Lottie since middle school.

The first thing on their bucket list was shopping at a large sports store in the states, they wanted to pick up tennis shoes which are half price here and check out the basket ball jerseys. Next on the list was eating at Kentucky Fried Chicken !

Yeah, I know...........who the Hell would ever want to eat there!!!

Normally this is a place I avoid like the plague, the name even sounds greasy. But, since they don't have K.F.C. in Sweden yet, they decided it was a must.........I felt sick afterwards from the deep fried chicken fat and I,m sure for the Swedes this will also be the last time they ever eat there again.

We have a Jazz basket ball game to go to tonight, yes that's right another thing on the list!

Tomorrow it will be skiing up at Alta.



I worked more on the boats today, mainly the ones on the left side as well as all the masts. The center boat still needs work and also the foreground right boat. I think the water needs to come up in value, but that will be easy enough to lay down some lighter values across the darker blue.

Richard Boyer

Sunday

The plaque hit me and garlic around my neck didn't seem to help much. Thursday afternoon I started to feel it coming on, then I dragged my work up to the crit session at Nick's place and started feeling worse. Somehow wine and a fever don't mix very well and I felt like just crawling into a bed. I stuck around against my better judgment to hear the comments about my work and looked at some nice landscape pieces Rick Graham did. But then that was enough.....I dragged myself back home to sleep twelve hours.

The next few days were spend just lying around the house as I slowly recovered. Although yesterday peace and quiet became a bit of a problem!

Lina had her birthday party with nine screaming girls all running around the house. Its amazing the decibel level they can collectively achieve, ear piercing in some cases. Karin, my wife was more or less over her flu and able to deal better with them, I just kind of checked out on the sofa in the living room. I was grateful that Markus and Victor had them involved in a treasure hunt for a while, which kept them runnng outside around the house in a wild frenzy. Nothing like sharing the decibel level with your neighbors, I'm sure we will hear about it today!

After they ran some energy off, it was cake and more sugar...........yes lets wind them up even more!!!


The "Show-off" at the left is Lina !!!

We scheduled the party for bolling up at the Union building at the University of Utah. Karin, Markus and I each took a carload of giggling ten year olds for the short drive up there, as they made up songs about the street names we drove past! Nothing like walking into a ordinarily quiet bolling alley, all eyes looking in your direction, with a large group of screaming laughing girls. We occupied two lanes and the girls insisted that the fence rails be put up. I soon realized why, most every ball would have ended up in the gutter, instead they proceeded to bounce the ball from fence rail to fence rail down the lane and sometimes miraculously hitting a strike. This went on for maybe an hour and a half and finally we decided it was time to head back for the spaghetti dinner with the gang.

Five hours later at 8 in the evening the last parent arrived to pick up her daughter. It was time for a glass or two of wine..........my stomach seemed to be better, but my mind was shattered. Karin's comment summed it up pretty well "I need a gin and tonic after that!"

Richard Boyer

Thursday

I became a little preoccupied with the background and wanted to get it done today, that's why the foreground boat still looks like the "battle star galactica". I'm not bringing it to the crit tonight, since I feel it needs to be farther along before I listen to the wrath of the fellow critters. Most of the things they would say about it would be the very things I still haven't finished off! I have a few older pieces I got back from Jim at the Mockingbird Gallery; I can bring those to the session tonight.

I really need to get this piece done by next week though, its Spring break for the schools and we are all heading down to Bluff, Utah.

Normally most people will ask, where the Hell is Bluff, Utah?....so, if you pull out your dusty atlas from the United Stated, just look at the four corners area and up a little northwest of there. You'll see it! We will be hiking down into Grand Gulch for 4-5 days. Its a remote canyon west of Bluff, filled with Anasazi ruins and running water form all the record amounts of snow they have had down there. It would be fun to take the paints along, but since we have to pack everything in on our backs, I would really like to travel light.

Karin has caught the same sickness that Lina had and is home today lying around in bed with a rumbling stomach. And as tight confinements would have it, I too feel a little tired. Although, thank God, still no upset stomach............maybe a spot of tea will cure it all !

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

The doctorate celebration is over. We had champagne and fresh halibut on the grill last night........yeah, bring more of that on !

Today I am back to reality, trying to loosely block in the boats that I want to have in this piece. Most of fishing boats have tall masts which will help break up the sky on the left side. I originally had the trees coming up higher there, but after seeing the masts coming up to the top of the canvas, I thought it would make a better contrast against a lighter sky than those dark trees.

I also need to block in the foreground boat in the lower right side and figure out what I want to have in the background. There is a little too much decision making involved in this painting. I'm not working from one particular reference piece, but rather a conglomeration of images. So the boats that I am adding have to fit into the landscape and in relationship to each other or else they will look totally off!

Sometimes when you get into these situations the painting seems to drag on forever.

Speaking of which, I have started my taxes finally. Seems every year I put it off until the end. I tend to just throw all my years worth of receipts into a shoe box and then have the daunting project of trying to sort everything out and add them all up. After an hour or so of number crunching I realize that for me the worst occupation in the world would be that of an accountant. Forgive me if there are any accountants reading this, but how the Hell can you possible keep your sanity just punching numbers all day long into a calculator? I'd rather roll around in fiberglass !!!

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

Not much in the way of painting today, Karin had to give her doctorate presentation at 11:00 up at the University. She is going for the Physical Therapy doctorate degree and yes, she was nervous. After I got back from the model session last night I was required to listen to the practice presentation on how weight lifting increases longevity and muscle strength in older people.

For me as an artist, its not the most riveting subject to listen to, certainly I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to a topic like that at any lecture series. But I submitted to my wife's, mainly she wanted to know how it flowed and if there was any glaring problems that needed to be addressed before her final performance in front of the Spanish Inquisition. I sure as hell couldn't tell the validity of whether the 85 year old's muscle density should be 7% greater in an MRI scan than the control group.

My eyes started to glaze over when she was comparing research papers by various scientists on the statistics of biopsy samples of muscle tissue taken form the elderly. Those that worked out verses those that didn't. The speech seemed just fine last night from what I could tell, so I wasn't too worried.

We were there 45 minutes early this morning. The laptop needed top be turned on. My job was after all, moral support.

Actually we did run into a slight problem when she was handed the projector that was suppose to connect up to the mac, the connection cable wasn't right, looked like some old fashion cable from a windows 95 computer. The connection end would have been like a car trying to fit into the mail box slot on the front door,.......... never in a million years.

Karin ran off to find another option. Luckily one of the committee professors showed up and had the very adapter we were looking for. She had a mac computer as well. Thank God, or else all Hell would have broken out!

Soon they all shuffled into the small room, sat down and explained to us, that she had twenty minutes to present her research, followed by a question and answer period, where they would try and punch holes in her findings. Afterwards we would have to leave the room as they talked over the fate of the poor applicant.

The speech started off a little hesitant and nervous, but soon fell into a more relaxed and confident tone. Twenty minutes later they all agreed she had presented the findings well and had indeed answered the fundamental question that the elderly should lift weights up until they die. Muscle mass increases longevity. The presentation went so well that they told us we didn't have to leave the room.

Yes.......she passed, with flying colors. Unfortunately she had to go back to work after the testing session so the champagne will have to wait until tonight.

Richard Boyer

Monday, March 22

Lina is home from school today, sick with some kind of a stomach flu. It became quite evident last night at about 3:00 in the morning (these things always seem to happen in the middle of the night) when she informed us that she needed to throw up. The good thing about being ten years old, is that they can generally make it to the bathroom and expel whatever evil spirit is plaguing them in the toilet. I remember a just a few years back when they would inform you, puff up their cheeks and let it spray out all over the bed, floor or wall. Thank God that period is over for the most part.

Karin is home now trying to get some tea with honey down into her stomach. I'm just hoping this won't spread around with a vengeance to each family member.


I started a new 24x36 boat piece. Some old colorful fishing boats with tall masts, rigging and fishing net booms (not sure what else they would be called?) against the blue sky, should make for an interesting painting.

Lets hope the tea will stay down this time !

Richard Boyer

Friday

The crit session went well last night. We started out with a little subtle wine tasting. Two bottles of the same wine, but two years apart. So the difference in taste can be hard to tell. The 2007 had the hint of cherry and the 2005 the same cherry smell and taste, but also a hint of leather.

Ah, there you go, a much rounder taste to the older one. I filled my glass up with that one!


So after cracking open a few bottles of wine, we headed upstairs to Nick's studio and ripped into the paintings. Here is what they said about this one-

Overall they liked the figures, there was some interaction between them, which was good. The background buildings needed work, they were suggesting to blue them out a bit. Well I tried that and it failed right off the mark, the entire painting had a cold feel to it, plain and simple...it just brought too much blue into the piece. So I repainted the buildings, but instead kept them warmer but darker, thereby giving the scene more contrast.

They informed me that the umbrellas needed more light, with a light side and dark side. So that I did. The figure in red on the right side needed some work around her head, it looked like she had a really thick neck and flat forehead........so I fixed that as well.

What else?....oh, the sky needed more blue. Some thicker brush strokes on the pavement. A little more blue to the plaza background so it would recede more and a little plant at the end of the wall behind the people.

That was this mornings project, as I looked at my notes. Monday I need to start a 24x36 boat painting. Southam Gallery called me and said they had a client in there that fell in love with a sold piece I did earlier with boats and wanted something in that direction. They live back in Connecticut by the coast and naturally love the boats. So I need to come up with an idea over the weekend.

We woke up to an inch of snow on the ground this morning. It looks rather depressing when you consider the warm spring like temps we have been having. This Sunday its suppose to be back up in the 60's again........welcome to spring in Utah!

Richard Boyer

Thursday

Well I tried to put a Monty Python piece on to my facebook yesterday, but I guess that doesn't work.....they censored it out, but yet, they allow other clips straight from youtube !!!

I'll never understand their one-sided logic there.


I added the plants on the right and fixed up some of the people behind, so now I'm more or less ready for the wrath of the crit session. Looking at it now I'm not sure what they will complain about, maybe that the figures need more color ?

The May Gallery has sold a few pieces as well as Southam Gallery, so it looks like things are picking up. Or as Karin said "looks like we have turned the corner!"

I just need to make sure things keep selling, after all I need to save up for the summer Amsterdam trip. I'm looking forward to that, its been so long since last time there. With the canals everywhere, there is always so much to paint. You don't need a car either, walking is the preferred method of transportation. Thomas, a German friend of mine, once drove there and ended up paying close to eighty dollars just to park the damn thing over the weekend.

Lina has her parent/teacher meeting in ten minutes, so I need to cut this short again today also.

Richard Boyer

      

This was Lina's idea of a perfect game of Tennis......she really likes Monty Python!!!

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

The sun is shinning and its really warm outside....so I want to get this logged in and head out in the sun. Lina is waiting with tennis racket in hand!

You most likely will have to look closely at the painting to see the changes I did today. Mainly I worked on their figures over at the right side, trying to bring detail and form into them. The plant on the right side will cover over parts of the guests and tables, but still I need to make sense of the people before covering over them with plant leaves. I did shrink down the table in the foreground and moved it over a little to the left. I'll have a few plant leaves moving more over to the left side as well. Let's see if I can get this puppy done for the crit session tomorrow. I need to finish off the greenery at the bottom, decide if I want to bring flowers into it there or not and then address little things here and there throughout the painting.

Rose agreed to do the crit up at her place, since they were gone last week and I volunteered to put it on instead.

Thanks to all for the comments about Lina's birthday yesterday. Last night she played a little with the racket in the street up at 8th Avenue. Our street, H Street in on a rather steep hill, so any round object will gain velocity as it flies downhill, or until it hits some object or somebody. Up at the cross street (8th Avenue) at least it is somewhat flat. Still the ball went flying....it's amazing just how far when the racket connects! I think she likes the game.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

This morning I added some more figures on the left and a few more in the background. Tomorrow I'll most likely be back over working on the people to the right. This is were the painting can drag on a bit, when you have a lot of figures or architecture to deal with. I find myself cleaning the brushes often to keep the colors pure. Usually I hold about ten brushes in my left hand as I work, but some times after a while some of the colors will mix on to other brushes and I need to take time off to clean everything up again, including the pallet. This way you don't find parts of your work getting muddy in color.

We got up very early today, 6:45 to be specific. Its Lina's tenth birthday and we were reminded of that on a daily bases for the past few weeks. So with Swedish tradition in mind, Karin made a cake and with candles lit, we all proceeded upstairs singing swedish birthday songs. One person carried the cake and the rest with presents in hands. It's a nice sight to have a group of family members slowly walk into a dark room and wake you up with candlelight.

Lina sat up and blew out the candles. She then opened the presents on the bed, as Karin and I sipped coffee. When Karin was ten years old, she remembered getting a tennis racket for her tenth birthday.....so tradition followed and Lina opened up hers. She also received many other things, like a rubic's cube, within seconds it was all mixed up and most likely will stay that way until somebody buys the solution book. "I use to do that thing in under two minutes back in college, but that was then!"

A package from Sweden arrived for Lina from Karin's mother, stuffed with more presents. After a while the bed was filled with wrapping paper and we thought it best to head down stairs for cake

Swedish cake is not as sweet as the American version which is usually coated in heavy sugary thick frosting. In Sweden, as well as our house we bake the cakes ourselves, put pineapple or banana between the layer and cover it with whip cream and strawberries. You don't end up with that obnoxious sugar buzz and I think it tastes a lot better!

Richard Boyer

Monday, March 15

I saw on my facebook, that somebody sent out a good youtube link about Johnny Nice Painter and his problems with black paint !

If the link doesn't work below, just type in Johnny Nice Painter, black.....its really quite funny !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT3TSHzmFgI&feature=related

We went skiing yesterday up at Alta. The top part of the mountain was a complete white-out with the clouds. Its the weirdest feeling trying to ski down an incline when everything is white, you have no reference if you are moving or not. As a result one falls quite a lot, especially when you think you are standing still, but in fact actually moving along into a mougel field. I know the word mougel is spelled wrong, but spell check doesn't seem to get it and pulls up totally un-related choices. It was fun skiing yesterday, we actually got a few powder runs in the morning.


This morning I worked more on the composition of the figures, not trying to finish them off at this point, but just making sure they all are where they should be. So, yes a few were moved around. I'll finish off the people over on the left side, then I'll come back with thicker paint and put in the deciding brush strokes. There is no point doing that too early on, especially when things might be moved around. I still don't like the chairs and table in the lower left. Maybe I just need to move them over a bit?

Richard Boyer

Friday

We had the crit session last night at my place again. Nick and Rose were out of town, so I played host and this time with no broken glasses!

I worked more on the cafe piece above, bringing in a few more figures and changes to the composition. I added a few chairs in the lower left so the eye just didn't race across the piazza. The umbrellas had more work done on them and I think now its coming together. The buildings need to remain neutral in color since the umbrellas will be so loud with the red shades. There are also plenty of reds on the table cloths and a few individuals. I'll have to take care not to make all that color look the same and keep each treatment of red a little different in value and hue from the next.

Richard Boyer

Thursday

Sorry it's been a while now since my last confession !

Tuesday I was busy stretching up some new sizes to paint on and yesterday we went skiing. Maria, one of Karin's Swedish friends use to work up at Deer Valley Ski resort as a pastry chef.

Yeah, that right.........she is the very person you ask to bring a dessert for your pot-luck dinners. It's inevitably something killer!

She has since moved back to Sweden, but comes to visit every now and then. When she is here, she usually work for a while at the resort and they reward her with all day ski passes in the form of coupons that you just trade it at the office. We got a pile of them as part of a x-mas present when she stayed with us.

Well, Karin and I decided to blow off the day and go telemark skiing.

It was nice, the morning was cloudy, but by afternoon the sky cleared up and we were basking in sunshine. The snow was a bit icy in spots and it made for some fast skiing. All day long the lift lines were non existent, so it was just to ski right onto the chair. I added up about 14,000 feet of vertical skiing we did with all the fast descents and "no waiting" high speed quads.

Deer Valley is also know for its food, so we took an early gourmet lunch and beer at the mid mountain lodge. Around three o'clock the quads were burning so stopped and hung out on the deck in the sun. nothing like a relaxing day to forget about life!


This morning I started a 24x36 cafe scene, another angle from the plaza in Gordes, Provence. It will take a while to figure out the lay-out of the painting, since there are quite a few people in it.

I'll be sure to take pics as I go along with it. That way you get to see all the mistakes and screw-ups as I work on it.

Richard Boyer

Monday, March 8

Well I broke down and added some rafts to the painting, sorry no kayak, I thought that would have been too small for this scale. The work is only a 14x11 and something that small might get lost.

I was working on miscellaneous errands throughout the day. Lina is home from school, they have some teacher conference going on. So I was the designated parent to help her with the scrap-booking project. Yeah what can I say, its a Utah thing !!!

Also the 24x36 farm house painting, as well as the 20x30 fixer-upper work, I sent off to Jim Peterson at the Mockingbird Gallery. Its nice when you send the work unframed, since no careful packing is required, just throw them in a box and tape it closed. Well, actually I don't really throw them in, I did have a lot of well padded cardboard boxes left over from the Mystic Gallery ordeal. Jim is going to switch out the work with older pieces and send them back to me.

As usual I was in dire need of some new brushes. So a trip to the local Utrecht store was also on the list. There I picked up some of their finest interlocked horse hair flats. They seem to last about six months and then they will inevitably start fraying apart at the ends. You can cut them down and end up with short rounds, but I don't like painting with them when they get that hammered. I'll usually donate them to Robert, our struggling artist friend at the crit sessions. He seems very grateful and can actually make use of the stubbed brushes

The art store here has this annoying habit of ordering too little of the common sized stretcher bars. So of course when I went in to pick up some 24 incher's, they don't have them and have no idea when the next order is coming in. You might figure that after a while of constantly running out of the most common sixes like 24, 36, 12 and 16, that they might double their following order..........never happens. I've told them countless times after buying up a case of a certain common sized stretcher bar that next time they should order twice as much. My response is usually a confused look from some high school kid, "Ah, like what ever!"

Two weeks later, they are still out of the size!

Richard Boyer

Sunday

Karin thought about getting up a little earlier and doing some crust skiing on the frozen morning snow.

We saw that the weather was not cooperating, it was a small blizzard outside.


Nevertheless a trip was planned and off we went into the soup along the Beaver Creek Trail.

Richard Boyer

Saturday

We drove into the muddy parking area of the Yellow pine trail head and set off with cross-country skis to find the frozen lake five miles up the canyon. With several feet of fresh snow on the ground our only option was to follow an existing trail through the deep snow. A trail that we hoped was heading in the right direction.

At least the dog was having a fun time!

Sasha's only form of transportation was to swim through the snow, her legs were not reaching the bottom! But still the stick had to be retrieved.

After a while it became obvious that we were in fact heading off in a different direction than our intended canyon. The snow was too deep to forge ahead in a new direction towards Yellow Pine, so we agreed to keep on the path and see where it would lead us. It zigzagged back and forth, more like a drunken moose had mad it. Not long afterwards we ran into a pack of snow shoe’rs breaking the trail through waist deep powder. Markus, who was first, heard the question, “Do you know where we are?” They all had this bewildered expression upon their faces and seemed a little out of place.

Brilliant! We have been following “the lost” up the side of the mountain. Markus informed them that they were way of course and pulled out the map to show them just how far. We decided to take over and break trail up the hill in a more direct line, instead of the haphazard tree-to-tree zigzag pattern. That maybe fine for snowshoes, but next to impossible on longer cross-country skis. Markus, Victor and I took turns breaking through the fresh snow farther up the hill; we decided to head to a vantage point where at least we might get a glimpse into the canyon. The others seemed content to follow behind us, since we were now in charge of breaking the trail.

We went on for maybe another hour and finally took a long lunch break, pushing your way up the side of a hill through deep snow is not an easy job. And in fact after a while we were all sick of it and quite hungry. The sun was out and we cleared out some places to sit in the snow. Lunch was good, especially with the Girl Scout cookies I had in my pack!

Nice spot, eh!

Group shot, taken by the lost show shoe people!

After that we headed back down. For some odd reason we figured the grade we came up on was not that steep and would require some effort to slide down it. We were wrong! Markus and Victor soon disappeared out of sight as they flew down the path we had just made. I took off after them; which was a futile. I never saw sight of them and decided it best to stop and wait for Lina and Karin. Twenty minutes went by and nobody. The thought crossed my mind that it might be better to ski back up and see what the problem was. I saw very quickly that Lina had a bit of a challenge. She would point her skis down the path and take off at speeds reaching the speed of sound, followed shortly afterward by a colossal whip-out in the powder. Obviously this method would take some time to get down the hill and most likely would end up with a few broken body parts.

I did my best to show her that by placing one of your skis in the fresh snow off to the side of the path it would slow you down, somewhat! At least you could control your speed a little better. It worked, the whip-outs were less severe and we slowly made it down the hill. At the bottom Markus and Victor had already build a snow cave. Obviously they felt it necessary to rub it in that we were so slow that they had time to build accommodations.

I’m now sitting on the couch with a gin and tonic in hand. No bones were broken today!

Richard Boyer

Friday

We woke up to five inches of wet heavy snow this morning. The cat definitely did not want to go out in that weather. All the trees are covered in white, with a few branches broken off here and there from the weight. It was fun walking up to school, with Lina. We watched all the cars sliding down the hill at two miles an hour. The sun is out now and everything seems to be melting fast. I walked out onto the porch to see if I could shot a painting and it was a slush field of water and snow.

The crit went well last night. I still have all my wine glasses, so I can't complain. I started out with the Tucson fixer-upper on the chopping block.



They didn't like the gate with the cross bars, so I got rid of that and added some classic barb-wire to the fence posts. The road also needed a little work, mainly just to break it up a bit and define the edges in a few places. All in all it took a few minutes to do the changes and I moved on to the farm house.



Here I darkened down the sky and threw in a little purple, now it seems to give the piece a little more drama. Then I added warmer reds to the foreground and darkened the path a bit. I also added more clumps of thistles and yellow flowers to play up the color. On Monday or Tuesday I'll send them off to Jim at the Mockingbird Gallery.

This afternoon we are all heading up to the cabin. With the little snow storm that blew through, I'm sure there will be some heavy wet snow to shovel out, before we can get in the driveway. So much for a relaxing on Saturday. Karin already has a ski expedition planned out to some remote lake.

Richard Boyer

Thursday

The crit session is at my place tonight, lets see if we can hold out on the broken wine glasses!

Today I grabbed an older work I got back from the Mystic Gallery and re-painted vast areas of the small 12x16.


I brought the older version into the crit session a few weeks ago and the critters (critique members) told me that it felt closed in. It was suggested that I get rid of some of the houses on the right and open up the water. Also to give it a light source, since right now its hard to tell where the sun light is coming from, especially in the foreground houses.

They will usually say, "You can fix that can't you, your a professional?"


The photo didn't turn out the greatest, maybe a little too dark, but I did take away a lot of the buildings, blued up the water and gave the houses more contrast. I added a bit more dimension to the back ground hills and put some more boats in the harbor. The critters can attack it tonight after the second bottle of wine is opened !

I need to get to the wine store now to pick some up, before leaving for skiing at Mountain Dell.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

I missed out on track skiing yesterday, Lina was feeling sick, so I stayed here and made dinner instead. I should be able to get up there again tomorrow, if its not raining. We seem to be having something moving into the valley today, the clouds are building up fast.


After looking at the shack for a while, I decided to warm it up a bit. Somehow the red bricks didn't seem to fit, so I tried more orange and now it has a better feel to it. Maybe the red was to cool and competed with the color of the roof. Now that I have changed the bricks to a more orange, they seem to contrast better against the rusty red color of the old tin roof.


Here is another older San Juan River painting that I decided to attack and change around a bit. The older version I have below and as you can see it lacked some contrast. So I darkened down the left wall and gave the back ground some more color and value jump between light and shade areas. The right shoreline was also darkened down, and I'm going to try to play up the reflection more. Still haven't decided if it needs a raft in it or not ?


Maybe I'll just put it aside for a few days and look at it with a fresh eye then.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

We had another model session over at Rick's place last night.


Hillary sat for two hours, so I decided to do a portrait of her, she seemed a little tired though. Her eyes kept getting smaller and smaller, so I would try to work on them first when she got back from each break.

This morning I finished off the Tucson home, a real fixer-upper as some real estate friends would call it. Just needs a coat of paint and she's ready to move into! I was wondering if a figure would look good in it, but then again it might end up looking like the home owner.


Karin said the bricks looked a little too new, so I aged them a lot and broke some of them up. I also boarded up the garage opening and collapsed part of the roof on the right side. The fence gate was added and I threw some more texture into the grasses......I think now its ready for the crit.

This painting as well as the last farm house I did, were actually fun to do. I'm so use to working on architectural scenes from Europe, that require much more attention to perspective and detail. These ones, since the buildings are already falling apart, who really cares if the wall isn't straight!
And the foregrounds I could relax on and just blast them in with bigger brushes. Another words, get a little sloppy with the paint.

I'll be track skiing again today, its Tuesday and both Victor and Lina have classes up at Mountain Dell. Actually this is the last week for that, next week we all meet up at Alta Ski Resort for a little downhill action with cross country skis, followed by pizza afterwards. After riding the lift up its amazing how good the kids do, absolutely no fear! Just point the skis straight downhill and let em rip! Mean while all the adults are yelling out at the top of their lungs to slow down.

Monday, March 1

Yesterday was a ski day up at Alta. I tried some out of bounds skiing through heavy crusted-over powder. It wasn't pleasant and my knees feel it today.....it reminded me of skiing through wet concrete. But the sun was out for part of the day and we had fun.

Today I worked on the Idaho farm piece and took out the figures on the right.....they just didn't work. Why would two figures be standing out in the middle of the field any way?


I also added more green to the bushes, yellows to the grass and a bit of red under the bush to the right. It could still use some more color, but I don't want to over do it.....so I might just let it be until the crit session this Thursday. I know Ron Bailey from the May Gallery would want me to throw in gaudy red flowers every where.......because Red sells!!!

But that is not going to happen!


This was my next block in.....which I think is close to done. I kept the foreground loose and had some fun with the pallet knife and a big brush. Its a 20x30 in size. The scene is from a painting trip I did eons ago down in Tucson, Arizona. I drove south of there towards the Mexican boarder and took some dirt road off the main highway and headed up into the mountains. So Brent Nageli, this painting is from your area, good luck trying to find the house, I was lost myself driving around there!

Richard Boyer