Monday, Sept. 30

It started as a small sore throat yesterday, by the evening it was fever with that yucky feeling. Now it's the full blown on flu / cold.  I'm sitting down as I paint, trying to take it easy. This thing has gone around all the family members, hit neighbors and art friends. Somehow I dogged the bullet until now.

I worked on this small 14x11 today. The Howard/Mandville Gallery is having a miniture show in November and as one of the artists, it's my duty to paint something.  Most artists don't look forward to painting for these kinds of events, since the same amount of time is required for a small version as opposed to a bigger one. And we have to sell it for a much cheaper price !!

In a few days I'll look at it again to fine tune it some more. 

Richard Boyer

Thursday

Today under gloomy overcast skies I finished the painting more or less off.  I have the crit session tonight so I am sure they will find errors here and there; but overall I am feeling pretty good about it. It will need a little more fine tuning over the next week or so; this is where I put it as side and look at it with a fresh eye after several days.  I did add pallet knife in the background to give the painting more texture and worked on the hands and book today.

We now have snow in the mountains from this front that blasted through, actually we will have three days of unsettled weather. The temperatures dropped a good twenty degrees since last week and now there is snow down to the 7000 foot level.  We are at 4800, so its just a matter of time!!! 

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

So I have started working on the larger version of the study I did. First I wanted to get the head done as much as possible, now as I finish off the rest of her I will adjust the face more as it relates to the rest of the body.  The background as I look at it might be a little two green, so I'll add some more yellow ochre to warm it up so more.  When its done I'll send it off to the Mockingbird Gallery, the smaller version I already sent them, so we shall see if Jim can sell that or not?

Richard Boyer

Friday

I have officially gone deeper into debt now, one day older and deeper in debt as the song goes.  With the coming of fall break in the schools I decided it was time to take the kids back East, back to where I grew up, to meet family members they have never seen.  So for two and a half grand we are flying back to Buffalo for a week; oddly enough for a few more hundred a ticket we could have flown to Europe.  Buffalo is off the beaten track.

It will be good to show them the sights like Niagara Falls, the old neighborhood and schools.

We had the crit session last night and I worked some more on the southern utah paintings.

This one I really darkened up the foreground to give it the effect of the last light of the day. I sent images of the work to the Southam Gallery, so I'm sure they will be calling soon to have a few.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

I decided to try a small 12x9 study today of a larger 30x24 painting I want to do. This little block-in will tell me if the composition will work or not and seeing the result from it, we should be good to go!!!

When done I'll send it off to Mockingbird Gallery, for some odd reason girls reading books seems to be a hot item.

The back is doing much better now with some of this medication I'm on.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

I tried lifting something way to heavy the other day, a large gas stove and now I'm paying for it. My back muscles have been going into spasms ever since, so now I'm pumped full of pain medication to let the swelling go down. With those small little muscles tweaked I could barely stand up. maybe its a sign of not being 20 something anymore !!! But it sure is taking its time to heal.

Well I pulled another one out of the box from Zions National Park. Bryce Liston and I were set up in the river bottom when they came by to tell us there was a flash flood warning out.  The threat of thirty feet of water and logs crashing down the river put the fear of God in us and we moved up to higher ground. So on this I really didn't get much done on location.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

This 12x16 is from Zion's National Park. The last day down there Bryce and I ventured into the park to paint. The humidity level was off the charts as we set up, another monsoon storm was moving in, bringing with it the treat of flash flooding.  So I did this view from the safety of a high bridge over the Virgin River. 

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

Two more out of the box today, its been a little dark overhead with the rain clouds hanging around. A perfect day to finish up some of these pieces.

This one was done that first evening when we drove down. Nick Rees was ahead of us and had set up to paint; so Bryce Liston and I cell phoned him with very limited coverage and found Nick set up on an old dirt road out in the middle of nowhere.  Naturally he had a cooler nearby, the large umbrella set up and a stereo system playing music….some artists take it completely over the top !

It was good though to get out of the car and paint.

On this one we were rained out earlier in the afternoon and then came evening when things began to clear up a little. We took highway 89 north out of Kanab to the Zions road turn off, then down a few miles to another dirt road. The sandstone cliffs in the background were in shadow through most of the painting session, but with the break in the clouds behind us we knew the sun would poke through just before setting and illuminate the cliff. When it did we were ready and caught the last light!

Richard Boyer

Monday, Sept. 9

I broke a few out of the box from our southern Utah trip. 

The first one here is of Rabbit Brush, that one day it was raining and overcast I had started a piece only to give up when the sun finally came out - the light had changed so much it wasn't worth working on the same piece. So I started this small 9x12 of the flowers against some lava rocks.

The next one I did as a sunset painting with Bryce Liston, so we had about an hour to get as much done as possible - which for me meant leaving the entire foreground blank.  Today I finished it off from the image I had.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

With Jim at the Mockingbird Gallery selling figurative work so well, I decided to try another painting of Felicia holding a candle.  Yes it might be a little religious and over the top, but what can I say, it will look good when done. Last Spring when I was visiting Markus in Sweden, we went down to Osthammar to visit relatives and shot Felicia in the local church. I needed some older interior scenes and this fit the bill.

At the moment I think I'm about three days into it and as usual its hard to get the likeness down, so I have been spending maybe too much time on that.

I seem to be distracted today with other thoughts and that is most likely adding to the problem. I'll do something physical like pack up a painting for the Howard/Mandville Gallery. I told them I would get the large 40x30 alleyway painting of Arles, France off to them this week.

Richard Boyer