Wednesday

I worked on the water and grasses today. Bringing them up to the same level as the figures.  There are still a few things that bother me about it and I can not put my finger on it just quite yet. This usually means setting it aside and looking at it in a few days time; then hopefully it will pop out at me!

Victor started up nordic jumping yesterday at the Olympic jumps at Park City. He wanted to get into in more this year after trying it for the first time last year. They meet twice a week until they can get to the level where they fly off the 90 meter, then they can do the Saturday training as well.  

While he was jumping I decided to at least do a skate ski workout on the track they have set up there just below the jumps. The course was good, but for the first of the season and at that elevation (7000) I feel it in the lungs. Yes, I was panting all the way around the five kilometer loop. Tomorrow I will do it again and hopefully the body will be more use to it!  Time to get back into shape again…

Richard Boyer

Monday, Dec. 17

As expected I have been struggling a little with the figures, painting the left one too large in the beginning and having to go back into it to re-paint that area. 

Today I decided to work a little on the water. There is some grasses growing from the sand underneath that I will put in, but first I need to get the waves in place.  It's so much easier to do that without all the other stuff in the way. There is a really nice reflection of the girls down below which I would like to play up.

That will be for tomorrow, now it's time for some Christmas shopping.  

Richard Boyer

Thursday

I was back on this painting today, working on the figures.  To nail them down right this, at least for me will take some time, going back and forth. So to my right side is an open book of Anders Zorn and I keep looking at how easy that bastard made it look. A true master at his field, a few quick brush strokes and the face is done!

Well with me it will take a lot longer, so let the 20,000 brush strokes begin !!!

Howard/Mandville Gallery came through and sold this large 40x30 painting.  "Sweet!!"

Unfortunately the way things work out with payments I won't be seeing that check until after Christmas Holidays.  But still I can not complain, it has been a good fall for me with the sales.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday, Dec. 11

I started this one over the weekend.  The Oil Painters of America show deadline is coming up so I had better start working on something for it.  This will be my daughter and her cousin walking through the water in Sweden.  It's just the block-in stage now.

The other painting here I worked on the last couple of days.  This is the town of St. Remy in Provence. Here Van Gogh spent fifteen months in the hospital painting some 150 works.  

I just saw this arch and decided that a nice sunlit cafe at the other side would look good. At this stage I could call it done, but know I'll just have to live with it a bit longer and see what else it could use in a few days.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

Today I was back on the town of Bonnieux, working on some of the foreground.  The crit group said the village jumped out too much against the green foliage, so I put a little orange in the trees and green/blue in the buildings. this trick plays down that contrast and hopefully sets the buildings more in the environment. 

Still when painting this view I keep wishing I had the house from where it was painted. Sitting on the porch with a view like this would be the best.

Richard Boyer

Monday, Dec. 3.

I worked a little on the boat painting. The shirt on my daughter had to be lightened up a bit and something needed to be done with her right hand. I decided to have her grabbing a water lilly to add some interest.  A few edges were also softened here and there, so now its ready to be left along again for a week to see what else I could do to it. It's seems like a never ending process.

Over the weekend I signed up for and took part in the Wheeler Farm Christmas market fair.  Wheeler farm is a historic farm they preserved from the pioneer times and managed to actually keep away the developers.  Outside of their 70 farm are the sprawling suburbs of Murray, Utah with strip mall after strip mall.  Not a pretty sight!

So there I sold my calendars and met a lot of people. It was good weekend and I sold eighteen of them along with some older cards I had.  

Richard Boyer

Saturday

“Artists are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime. Every day, artists face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again. Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every role, they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgment. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life - the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. Why? Because artists are willing to give their entire lives to a moment - to that line, that laugh, that gesture, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Artists are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another’s heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.”

- David Ackert

Tuesday

I worked some more on the foreground, trying to keep it all in shadow and less defined, so the eye would look at the village more.  Tomorrow I can start the orchestration part of it, by pushing the highlights here and there on the buildings.  This is usually the part that can go on for weeks.  

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

This painting is now officially driving me insane, to much information to paint, to many damn buildings. I'm to the point where I could just level a large area of the piece and put in a Walmart, maybe even add a large parking lot to go with it.  Then again it might be a little harder to sell to the right client!

Actually most of the buildings are in place now, leaving just the foreground foliage leading up to the wall. Once that is done I can go back and orchestrate the light better on some of the village. Any way I look at it this thing will take much more time to paint than planned. 

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving without too many over-eating pains. We will be having some close friends over for the fest and libations. 

Richard Boyer

Monday, Nov. 19

I worked some more on the Bonnieux painting. The background I felt needed to be defined before I could continue with the rest of the village.  Also with the clouds in place it makes a lot more sense with the light logic.

Over the weekend it was pointed out to me that the calendar I am selling has a mistake or two. It took a neighbor to see the glaring mistake the layout person did from the print company.  He put January first as a Friday, when it should be on a Tuesday. So as a result all the dates for January are messed up and the buyer will need to correct it with a pen or sharpie.  He also gave February 31 days ?!!  I sent off an angry email to him, but it's all too late  Now I have a quirky calendar with the month of January off, maybe it will become a collectors item like the stamps that were printed up-side down by the Postal Service.

Richard Boyer

Friday

Tonight is the Southam Gallery "30 Year Anniversary Show" and yes, the artists will be there.

So I dropped off a few works yesterday so they could get them hung and ready for the big event.  But, there is always a but when the artist goes into the Gallery; I was given a few pieces to take home!

This one I was told gave the viewer a closed in feeling, trapped in the gorge as it were.

 

So this morning I took out the paints and played the roll of the all mighty, changing around the geological history a few million years and pushed back the canyon wall a bit, also eroding some of it down so one could see the sky.  Now hopefully the viewer will feel more open space!

I sent an image off to them and hopefully they will want to re-try it now.

Richard Boyer

And by the way, some of you people looking at the blog site; you could really help me out by ordering one of my calendars...they do make for some nice Christmas gifts!

Tuesday, Nov.13

So over the weekend we got over four feet of snow in the mountains.  Here in the Avenues I must have shoveled two feet of wet heavy snow and as expected my back feels it. Our backyard here looks like a winter wonderland!  With all this new snow most of the major ski resorts are opening up this week, Brighton has opened for today.

To counteract the snow, I decided to work on this small beach painting, where the temperature is near 80 degrees with a light breeze blowing!  I got a few back from Howard/Mandville Gallery and decided to attack this one.  There was a rather large figure in the foreground, so I painted her out and put a group of people in the middle ground and re-painted the water.  now I think it looks a lot better and could maybe sell at the Southam Gallery show this Friday.

Richard Boyer

Friday

Last night was the Zion's Bank Art show in downtown Salt Lake City. They put on this one night only art extravagance with 30 or so artists and full catering. It's a lottery system to get in, but once in you are allotted a ten foot wide grid to display your artwork. Live music groups played on each of the four floors they have set aside for the event. Its a big deal for the artist since you need to be set up at 6:00 in the evening and take everything down after 9:00, but you do meet a lot of people which is good for the networking.

I tried to get into it this year but didn't make it from the hat draw; our friend Sid Colton did. So we were there visiting him and offering out moral support, (not financial!!!).  There were of course a lot of fine artists there, many of which I visited and chatted with as the servers came around with food for the clients.

I nice warm breeze was blowing throughout the evening, the precursor to the cold front moving through. This morning I woke up to snow and the white stuff has been coming down ever since. The next three days are forecasted for snow, so it looks like winter has officially arrived.

I worked more on the hill top village again.  It's going to be another one of those paintings I have to methodically move along dealing with the architecture. Yup, this will take a while to finish!

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

I started another 30x40 hill top village. This time the town of Bonnieux in Provence.

Southam Gallery had somebody come in last week very interested in the last one I did of Gordes, Provence.  So they made sure I knew about it and asked if I could start something to replace the painting if sold before the show on the 16th.  So since I have always wanted to paint Bonnieux I figured that would make a good subject matter and as usual it will prove to be a nightmare with the architecture cascading down the hillside. 

The big question is whether or not I can get it done in time? 

Richard Boyer

Thursday

I've been working slowly on the boat painting here, seems to be taking it's time, I've been pre-occupied with other things lately.  But I did work on the water, now I have to bring the figures up to a better level than just the block-in stage, also the boat.  Once that is done then I can start orchestrating the entire piece so it looks more finished.

Last night we went to the "Blue October" concert.  Our neighbor Rose got some "meet the band" tickets; so we went earlier at four in the afternoon to meet the group and listen to them do their sound check.  It was interesting but hard on the feet, since I was standing basically the entire day from painting in the morning to meeting them, then waiting in line to stand at the concert until one in the morning.  Now we did get in early and got to the very front row, close enough to see everything including the sweat!

The group put on a perfect performance as usual with Justin, the lead singer's emotional music. Nick got a few iPhone pics from the performance I thought I would share with you. The warm up band "Silent Film" from England were also very good. I bought their signed CD at the show.

Lead singer Justin Furstenfeld

here is his main side man, violinist Ryan Delahoussaye

Richard Boyer

Monday, October 29.

The calendar orders have started to pick up a little, maybe people are thinking of Christmas ideas. here is todays shipment !!!

Last night it was Pumpkin carving. We had the Strayers over and with a little red wine got creative with the knives. Now I know there are people out there who really get into the face carving as I have seen by the pictures going around the Internet.  The problem is I don't want to spend six hours on a gourd that is destined to rot away after a week!

So our creation time is greatly reduced to about twenty minutes. Afterwards followed the dinner and more wine. 

Richard Boyer

Friday

Well Mockingbird Gallery sold another piece for me.  The 18x24 Rabbit Brush painting.

We are once again under clear blue skies. The storm moved on to Colorado and the light dusting on the grass has all melted away.

Today I finished off the wooden boat painting.  From the crit session last night I changed the color of the small rowboat to a reddish hull, giving it more interest in the composition. A little work to the water was also done, along with popping some of the highlights on the boats. Now it just needs to dry a bit and I can send it off to the Howard/Mandville Gallery next week. 

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

Today, under gloomy rain clouds I worked some more on the small 11x14 boat painting.  We have a front moving though the valley for the next several days and snow is now in the mountains. When it's all said and done we could end up with several feet at the upper elevations. God knows we need the water after last years drought, and to make matters worse they keep predicting a dry winter to come!

Now some of the ignorant politicians here in Utah will tell you it has nothing to do with global warming…right!!!

I basically worked on the foreground boats working wet into wet. Now it needs to dry a bit and so I can go back into it and punch certain areas up, like the side of the hulls.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

I need to come up with a 30x40 painting for the May Gallery and figured why not try another figurative piece, another boat in the lilly pads painting.  It was a fun painting to do and a challenge with the water. This time I have my daughter in the back of the boat picking lilly flowers.  The foreground will be a variety of green leaves from the plant, along with a few bright colored flowers here and there.

This is the first stage, the block-in of the canvas. Making sure the canvas is covered and all the computational elements are addressed. So now everyone will say, "Well why then is the foreground all just one color?" …..because it's just the start "Grasshopper", all things will come in good time!

Hopefully I can keep the painting a little looser in style to add some excitement.

The calendar has been selling fairly well. A little over a week and I have sold over fifty of them. That being said, I would just like to say to order your today. I do have a finite amount and once they are gone, they will be gone forever!

Richard Boyer

Monday, Oct. 22

Jim Peterson at the Mockingbird Gallery sold this painting last weekend along with two smaller 12x16's.  I'm always so glad when a figurative painting sells.  They take so much time to do because of the challenging subject matter, that it really becomes a plus to the ego when you sell them.  So way to go Jim.

This piece I started this morning, it's just a small 11x14 of some boats in Stockholm.  So when I get it done I'll send it off to the Howard/Mandville miniature show next month.

Richard Boyer

Friday

Mockingbird Gallery gave me back this painting, so as usual I re-worked it this morning and added a small angled roof to the left side and a dirt path leading into the barn.  Its actually an old hay storage shed in Sweden. Now a days they wrap all the hay in plastic and just leave it outside all winter.  You end up with these large white marshmellow looking things in the landscape. Not the most romantic thing to paint!

I left the hay balls out and just worked on the age of the structure. So now its a new painting ready to be sent off again to another gallery.

Richard Boyer

Thursday

Jim at the Mockingbird Gallery sold this small plain air painting I did of Rabbit Brush and wanted to know if I could do a larger version of it. 

So I decided to try and do an 18x24 start to finish in one session.  This morning I stretched up the canvas and started painting from an image of the smaller work.  Well at 2:00 this afternoon I finished it off. Okay sorry, thinking back on yesterdays entry, it's not really finished quite yet.  I will be having the crit session tonight and I'm sure when the others have a little wine in them, things will be said. Maybe unpleasant things, things I don't want to hear….and I will tweak it some more tomorrow.

It's not really that bad and besides I'm use to it all.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

People will always ask me, "Well how long does it take you to do a painting?"  My honest response would have to be thirty years.  Okay in reality I have been working on this for the past five days or so and I look at it and say to myself that its almost done. I could put it in a frame and send it off to the gallery, but it the back of my mind I know that it could be better.  So being the fanatic perfectionist I will set it aside to look at it over the next couple of days, take it to the critique session tomorrow and generally obsess over it until I can bring it up to the level to earn a signature.  

As other artists will say, it just need to be tweaked here and there.

Richard Boyer

Monday, October 8.

I have been working on this large 30x40 view of the town of Gordes in Provence.  It's in the morning light, so most of the town is still in shade with the sun just peeking around the side of the hill.  With all the architecture it seems to be taking a long time. I have found this to be the norm with french and italian mountain top villages. None of the buildings are square having been added onto throughout the last half millennium.  So each day I have been methodically plodding along to capture the feel of the early morning light on the roof-tops, which all seem to be pointing off in different directions. Once I get everything painted in then I can come back and orchestrate the light and shadow better.  The background hills I would like to fade out more to give a better scenes of light.

For the past several weeks I have been working on producing a calendar and found out rather quickly that it is not an easy undertaking.  Through a friend of mine I was introduced to a computer programmer who was able to put it all up on my web site.  I am very grateful for this, since my knowledge of HTML is just enough to get me into serious trouble.

So without further adieu I present my 2013 Calendar called Travels….and it's only $15. think of all your Christmas gifts coming up !!!

http://www.richardboyerart.com/Calendar.html/
Please check out my website and the images I have selected 

and order today

Richard 

Thursday

I have been working on this larger 30x40 painting of the mountain top village of Gordes in Provence for Southam gallery.  I took an older painting sanded it down and I’m in the process of just covering it over with the new subject.  When ever possible I will always try and recycle materials kind of like the “Borg” in Star Trek the next generation where they absorb and assimilate any foreign life form to use as their building block materials…”resistance is futile.” They use to always say.

I’ll have a picture of that soon. But today I worked on the 12x16 painting of Fall River Falls; this is the one that sold twice at the Mockingbird Gallery.  The person who didn’t get the original asked if I could do something like it again, which of course I agreed to.  I tried to keep it in that plein air fashion and do the piece quick with looser brush strokes, so hopefully the client will be happy with it. I would say it looks very similar to the original. I’ll take it to the crit session tonight and then send it of to the gallery next week.

Richard Boyer

Larry

Larry if you are out there I could use some help setting up my new calender on the website.  I will give you a painting for it !  I just need your email.

Richard

Tuesday

The drive back from Bend was long as usual, just glad to get out of the car after ten hours on the road.

The show went well for me. All in all five paintings sold including this figurative piece I sent last week.  this is the one rejected from the Oil Painters of America show, so I'm glad I can throw that back at them that it sold in under five days after it arrived at the gallery !

The woman that bought it has swedish ties and met me the opening night to get the full story about the painting.

Jim Peterson had a "put your name in the envelope" system, then at 8:00 he drew out the names.  When the duet settled he had sold 13 or 14 pieces.  

This 8x10 study sold for me, it was actually done the day of the show, just a quick morning study.

Also this 11x14 fly fishing painting

And this 12x16 piece, twice actually!  They pulled one couples name out of the envelop that had already left and this guy next to me gave a sigh, he too had his name in there.  So I told him I could do another version of the falls, he agreed and we ended up being both happy.  So I earned back my gas money on the trip plus some.

Richard Boyer

Saturday

It’s show time tonight. The event where people come into the gallery put their name in an envelope under the work and at the end the winning name is called. You are then expected to pay for the piece. The gallery usually serves wine to make sure general public gets in the right mood!

I did two smaller 8x10 pieces today, one as payment for staying at the house and the other just for fun.

Tomorrow I drive back to Salt Lake City.  

Richard Boyer   

Friday

My head hurts, which is usually the case when you get a bunch of artists and gallery owner together.  I had to leave the house I was staying at since it was being rented out to somebody over the weekend.  So now I’m at one of the clients guesthouse from the gallery with the artist Steven Lee Adams.

Last night we invited several other painters and Jim Peterson over for libation until the wee hours of the morning talking about art. What a surprise!

Yesterday was the due date for all plein air paintings. Throughout the afternoon most artists were dropping off their works. Today they will be hung on the wall for the show tomorrow.

I did one last piece from Devil’s Lake with Craig Zuger on Wednesday. We set up along the shallow shoreline, which was frozen with a tin layer of ice. A sign that fall is coming to the Cascade Range.  The surface was like glass and one could see the bottom clearly out in the middle of the lake.  I felt with water that smooth, I had to put a duck in there to help break it up a little.

Richard Boyer

Thursday

I met up with most of the artists the other day at a spot along the Fall River south of Bend. Craig Zuger drove us to the remote location that I would have never found in a million years.  Driving through the fog – or smoke with the fires raging the way they are - Craig got lost….  A “Local” was lost, so yeah I would definitely be still driving around the dirt roads looking for life and civilization.  The fog as it turned out quickly burned away to brilliant sun.

This river seems to be popular with all the hard-core fly fishermen there.  Setting up next to them we heard all the tales of how good the area is, world famous by some. To me it was just another river….I kept that to myself, lest to offend the die-hards.

My first painting of the morning was the falls down river.  It looked like a nice spot to set up by the river and bask in the sun.  The other day it was cold in the shade by Sparks Lake, so this was a good change to feel warm again.

In the afternoon I worked on this one.  The guy in the painting told me he comes up here five times a week to fish with his dog.  He might have been what some people call extreme….

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

I’m in Bend, Oregon now, drove up on Saturday and staying in an empty house that should have been filled with traveling artists.  Several cancelled out so looks like I am the only one staying in the guest house, which I can’t really complain about, at least it is nice and quiet. 

Craig Zuger gave me a call the next morning and we headed out to Sparks Lake up in the Cascade Range.  We hiked out to a point overlooking the water with a view of the South Sister Mountain, set up in the shade and started painting.  It was then I got a garbled cell call from Jim Peterson at the gallery, I found out later that he was just checking in with us. But the call was breaking up, as is the case with all cell phones. My voice carried across the water and that’s when we heard…”Richard Boyer, is that you?”  It was the un-mistakable sound of Bart Walker yelling across the lake.  The reception between us was far better than the cell phone. He joined us and I finished off this 12x16.

After lunch we all turned a few degrees and did another painting.  I picked a view of Broken Top Mountain, the remnants of a cataclysmic volcanic explosion that wiped out a large area some time ago in geological history. Seems like any one of these peaks could follow the route of Mount Saint Helens and take out half the state.  I actually had to bushwhack farther out along the shoreline to get this viewpoint with the foreground.     

Richard Boyer

Friday

I have been painting up at the cabin again, not only on the canvas but also the living room wall.  It was time for a fresh coat of paint to cover up the dingy old stuff.  That meant patching all the holes and preparing the surface. Grant it I still feel the place needs to be torn down completely and re-build from the ground up; but that won’t happen until I win the lottery.

As for the real painting I decided to re-work some parts of the beach scene here.  The grass needed to be lighter and the water had to have an overhaul.  It just wasn’t there yet so I re-painted areas.  I also decided on some clouds in the sky, so now it feels done.  I guess it better be since I sent off the image to the Southam Gallery. They are having a show in mid October and requested a beach painting from me.

Tomorrow I will be driving to Bend, Oregon and the Mockingbird Gallery.  Jim Peterson is having a weeklong plein-air painting event where all his artists’ head up into the mountains and paint on location.  We have several days to finish the work and then we hand them into the gallery for a show.  It’s actually a fun event going out with other artists to paint and the area around the eastern side of the Cascade Range is beautiful.  All the rain clouds, you would expect along the northwest coast are held back by the mountains, so Bend is actually quite sunny and dry.

Richard Boyer