Well I must confess that I have not been doing too much painting during the holidays here. Today was just another example of playing around. We went sledding, with our ten foot long Toboggan, a present from my parents several years back.
We have been snowed on here the last two days in a row with more predicted.
Looks like we are in for a good winter
Richard Boyer
We are back in
Sunday we went out with friend up at the cabin and took with a picnic, nothing like a little white wine out in nature. Monday we were at it again doing a back country tour along the Beaver Creek trail under cloudy skies for several hours.
Today Karin decided to show me a new spot up in
It’s time to put the feet up and read a book I got for Christmas
Richard Boyer
Christmas day was relaxing. The presents seemed to dwarf the small tree, as we gathered around, some of us with coffee in hand. Lina handed out the gifts, as she read the cards taped to each present. In my case it’s just a simple “to and from” But Swedish tradition involves writing rhymes about the gifts and in Karin’s case these lyrical hints as to the packages contents can be quite lengthy and involved. Leave it also to the Swedes to come up with a website and hotline for those in dire straits who need a last minute catchy phrase for their gift giving.
The day was sunny and relatively warm, so Karin and I went cross-country skiing up one of the canyons farther down the road. The children of course were magnetically drawn to their new presents and the idea of leaving them as probable as a solar eclipse.
It was good to get out for us though.
I did shoot a small clip from up there!
Richard Boyer
Here is a picture of the guilty gang. Early this morning they went up the road to a quiet spot, skied in and cut down a scrawny juniper tree. Your perfect Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It wasn’t actually a pine tree, so I doubt there would have been much commotion if they were caught anyways.
Now that we have lights and a few ornaments on the tree, it looks rather proud in our small living room. The only thing missing are the presents under it.
We had Christmas Eve dinner at Lance and Maria’s house in Park City, with a few other friends. The usually three hour-long dinner with a wide variety of dishes, toasted every five minutes to a glass of Vodka or Aquavit. You can tell that we were at it a while when somebody asked to fill just the top half of their snaps glass. It’s always a warm fuzzy feeling to spend Christmas Eve dinner with friends.
Richard Boyer
Somehow its always so easy to say the day before, “yeah, we’ll be on our way to the cabin by three, no problem!” Two hours after that prediction we were still packing the car, with the inevitable ‘just one more’ last minute errand to finish off. I think two and a half hours after our pre-determined departure time; we rolled out of the driveway. A light drizzle fell on the windshield.
We had heard through the nightly news that Park City had several feet of new snow, at least that was so until the rain came and compressed it all down. When we arrived at the cabin, it wasn’t buried under mounds of snow like we thought, but just a foot or two of wet snow, commonly referred to as concrete. The heavy stuff your back feels the next morning. After digging out several tons we had enough room for two cars to get in. With all the Christmas gear and skiing equipment we needed the extra vehicle.
There is one thing we did not take.
Our plan for tomorrow is to head out and cut down a small “Charlie Brown” sized Christmas tree from farther up the road in the Uinta National Forest. This being of course highly illegal, but to a Swede interpreted as a challenge. Normally one is required in the beginning of September to stand in a long line at four in the morning outside the ranger station in Kamas, Utah. This is why I’m not going with tomorrow, as the token American tagging along in this illicit activity we would surly get busted and end up in the Kamas town jail for Christmas. If Karin does it with her accent, they would just smile and say “You know…you’re really not suppose to do that in this country!” And let her continue on her way. So with that in mind, we put the saw in the back of the car.
I will let you know how it goes tomorrow……
Richard Boyer
So what’s the definition of a “Hypocrite”? Now we have Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks complaining that someone leaked a Swedish police report about his sexual offenses over the internet. This moron has the audacity to complain about his personal information leaking out to the world !!!
He deserves it and a lot more.
Still a little more shopping to do. Karin and Victor went out last night, leaving the last item on the baking schedule in the oven. The instructions were drilled into me, that in fifteen minutes be sure and take it out!
Lina and I were cleaning up in the kitchen and remembered that there was laundry down stairs that needed to be hung up. Sometime during that half hour project the timer sounded off and I didn’t hear it. I came back up to the kitchen to see the oven smoking. Expletives flew from my mouth as I pulled out the blackened Christmas wreath cake. Ohhh, the tragedy. This is why I hate pastry baking, unlike dinners, fifteen minutes this way or that doesn’t matter. But with cakes and any kind of formula that involves yeast or baking powder, fifteen minutes to much and you end up with the chemical compound of carbon!
Well enough of that, this morning I worked on the
I’ll bring the laptop along to the cabin and make some entries there, unfortunately they can not be posted until I come back to civilization.
Richard Boyer
As they say “Another Pineapple Express rolled through the State last night.” That’s when they say the jet stream goes over
Some place down there in the valley is Salt Lake City!Yesterday Victor and I went downtown to go shopping; he hadn’t started and felt it necessary to go to one of the most populated shopping districts we have. And yes, it was a zoo. We both couldn’t wait to get out of there. This afternoon will most likely be a repeat again, as more needs to be bought. Yes the economy seems to be picking up!!!
This morning I took another
Richard Boyer
The crit session is scheduled at Carlie’s tonight, a combination Christmas gathering and artwork bashing mixed with a dangerous dose of red wine! It should be fun, most of the artists will be bringing along their respective others to meet and socialize.
As it turns out the model cancelled and we all had to wait around for a replacement to arrive. So it gave me a chance to meet the rest of the crew, most of whom I’ve never met before. Our group consisted of Liz Robbins, Robert Duncan, Rick Graham, Dean Bradshaw, Eric (not sure of the last name), Bryce and myself. There we killed time looking through the hundred and one art books Bryce had up on the wall. And as with most artists the conversation soon came down to graveling over just how good Anders Zorn was. The depressing realization that no matter how much we work at it, we’ll only end up being half as good as the master was. That being said….
“Here is my half as good result for the night”
This morning I worked on another
I just worked on a few changes to the figures and bringing in more detail. That second boat was also enlarged a bit.
It’s time for me to start Christmas shopping this afternoon. I have a few relatives, who need to get something in the mail before the holidays.
Richard Boyer
I asked for it !!
This morning I sent off the image to Carlie and got the bone chilling critique back, that the main figures and canoe were much too big in comparison to the back ground cliffs. After looking at it I humbly agreed and spent the next hour painting them out and then back in again. What a pain in the ass!
Carlie on the other hand did it all in a few minutes with Photoshop. She just altered my JEPG image at her job and sent it back to me with the reduced sized canoe. I wish we had that option as painters to just move an object around with a curser and be done with it!
I guess its all part of the learning curve.
Richard Boyer
The Christmas lights are up now, what a pain in the @#$%. The tree in the front yard isn’t quite big enough to support my weight. So when I try to climb up to get the higher branches the entire tree bends under my weight, giving me the sensation of snapping the trunk at any moment.
I worked more on the commission piece again, mainly with the figures. He wants himself in the painting with his son. So I had to add two different images together to get that result. It still needs some fine tuning in another session.
At the figure session last night I was looking through Rick Graham’s copy of Richard Schmid’s new book “Landscapes”. It’s a very large impressive undertaking filled with images of his work. I wanted to order one this morning, but though just perhaps it might be possible to get it signed. I know he did it with the last book he sold. So I sent off an email to Molly Schmid, the one who is handling the distribution. (That is what the web site was saying, whether it’s true or not is another story.) And so far haven’t received an answer to my inquiry.
Richard Boyer
I worked with the back ground on this commission piece, defining all those sandstone spires. And yes those rock fingers really do exist, about halfway through
As you can see I painted over the figures some what, I think they will be reduced in size to make them fit in better. Adding the boats will be tomorrow’s project.
We have warm weather today, so that means hanging Christmas lights outside. I think we are the only neighbors that have not put them up yet and people on the block are starting to wonder why?
Richard Boyer
Well, well, well Brian Mitchell was pronounced guilty for the abduction and year long daily raping of Elizabeth Smart. Most everyone here in
I was planning on putting up Christmas light today, but with hail coming down at the moment, that project will be put on hold.
This morning I worked on several paintings from the crit session last night. On this one I enlarged the main boat in the foreground and changed around the back ground some what.
I'm still waiting on news from Southam Gallery about that lawyer and the River painting. Last time I talked with them the guy still had not come into the gallery. I raced to get the painting done for nothing!
Richard Boyer
I dropped off the 18x24 red rock painting at Southam Gallery yesterday, so let’s see what happens. The lawyer/ client was coming in this morning to look at it.
I have another Christmas order I am working on now, or at least it was started today. Martin from our scout group wants a small 12x16 painting of the last river trip we did down Labyrinth Canyon on the Green River in Utah. And, of course he would like to be predominately placed in the painting with his son. So I’ll have to do a little composite work with other shots I took on the trip to get him in the right spot.
It’s back down to the duplex now to work on odds and ends repair work.
Richard Boyer
Here is the final result, lets hope the client likes it ?
Karin and I went to the
They were selling CD’s there and if you bought one, the man himself would sign it for you. So we did!
Today in the studio I was back in my element blasting the latest CD form “Blue October”
I guess the night of Jazz wasn’t enough to convert me?
Richard Boyer
It’s still not done, needs a day of orchestration. The session where you just look at it and fine tune parts to bring it more to life, some times this can drag on for weeks.
Last night our house smelled of gingerbread cookies. It was the baking marathon with Brith and my wife, a Swedish tradition to signify the arrival of the Christmas season. Ten pounds of cookie dough is rolled out wafer thin on the table. Then different shaped cookie cutters are used by everyone to fill up all the baking sheets before Brith popped them in the oven. This assembly line production went on for several hours. Besides the usual Christmas tree, angel and heart shaped forms used and especially after several glasses of red wine and Glogg; several different species of free formed animals came to be. Misshapen goats, snakes and the occasional dinosaur lay upon the cooking sheet. Brith, our Swedish quality controller would always catch those with a “What the Hell is this?!”
We finally used up all the dough around 9:30 at night and ended up filling a half dozen large cookie tins. Thus the Christmas season has started!!!
Karin and I are going out tonight to see a jazz concert to get in the festive mood.
Richard Boyer
Day number two on the race to get it done. I worked on more of the foreground shoreline. With the colors richer and more contrast, I realize now that I may have to punch up some in the background.
Yesterday afternoon we worked on the duplex. The master bedroom there had been painted a translucent green color with gold underneath. It reminded me of a Victorian brothel color! So we went over it with a pastel green color and now it looks more like a normal room should look like.
This afternoon it back down there to work on more touch up’s
Richard Boyer
I started the Red rock painting today for that client. It’s a section from
For me it is easier if I work on the back ground first and move my way forward. I threw in the darks in the foreground just to help with the value gradation as one goes back. My value range on those distant cliffs is between a 4 and 6 out of the 1 to 10 scale and of course I’ve added a blue haze to help push it all back in the distance. My next session I’ll work on the rich colors of the foreground and that should give it the nice atmospheric perspective.
Now it’s always the big question if the client will even like it?
Richard Boyer
I ended up working on a section of the roof yesterday. The duplex has this small living room window protrusion on the south side and unfortunately during the last wind storm much of the shingles were blown off into the backyard. So up there I spent much of the afternoon freezing with hammer in hand and in typical male fashion, as Karin would say, forgetting to pick up my daughter from school. Lina called home asking where I was and nobody knew? I ended up in the dog house with my wife!
Southam Gallery called and informed me that they have a lawyer, who will be coming into the gallery on Wednesday and that he would like to see a red rock canyon painting to buy for one of the partners leaving the firm. My mission, should I choose to accept it, would be to blast out a
I told them that I would try. I figure its best to seize the opportunity and go for the potential sale, especially the way the economy is now a days.
I worked more on the Brugge painting today and sent off a picture to the Howard/Mandville Gallery. They can then forward it to their client to see if he is even remotely interested, with the option that the artist can still change things around if so desired. My only limitation is that I will not add puppy dogs or pet cats!
Richard Boyer
I worked on this piece today, bringing up the details on the buildings to the right. It still needs more work, but I have other things on the plate, as they say.
Richard Boyer
