Molly Hashimoto

Drawing in Yellowstone with Alan Petersen

Upstream from Olo, drawing by Alan Petersen

On June 1st to 4th, 2013, Alan Petersen, Curator of Fine Art at the Museum of Northern Arizona, will be teaching Drawing the Landscapes of Yellowstone for the Yellowstone Institute. In addition to his teaching and curating, Alan also paints the landscapes of the Colorado Plateau and Grand Canyon, and is writing a book about Gunnar Widforss, a watercolorist of the 1920s who was championed by Stephen Mather, first superintendent of the national parks. I met Alan while I was doing a little bit of my own research online about Widforss, an artist I deeply admire. I've written about him several times on this blog. I am thrilled that Alan is giving a lecture on Widforss one evening during my June 5th to 8th class at Yellowstone, The Pleasure of Plein Air Watercolor.  Alan's drawing, pictured above, beautifully captures the topography of the inner Grand Canyon near Kanab Creek; I was reminded of the work of William Henry Holmes, "one of the greatest field artists America ever produced", according to Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History.

Basalt Cliffs, Drawing by William Henry Holmes

Holmes faithfully and magnificently recorded the  topography of Yellowstone in trips he made in the 1870s, beginning with the Hayden Survey in 1872. Colleen Curry, curator of the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center, shared several of Holmes' drawings with me, including this one of basalt cliffs.

 

 

Yellowstone Institute Seminar: Plein Air Watercolor

Yellowstone Canyon View, Molly Hashimoto

In a few short months I'll be heading back to Yellowstone to teach a seminar for the Yellowstone Institute: The Pleasure of Plein Air Watercolor--dates are June 5-8, 2013. I am so pleased to be returning after a one year hiatus.  Last year I really missed seeing the wildlife and the grand views of the canyon and the rich colors of the thermal pools. I just finished this watercolor of the Yellowstone River Canyon, using a sketch I had done on location near Artist Point along with a couple of photos I took there at the same time. My friend, Ilona Popper, writer and wolf advocate, who lives in Jardine, Montana (a hamlet several miles up the road from Gardiner), helped find this location for us; we were looking for something out away from the crowds, but still spectacular, and here it is--at most a 5 minute walk from Artist Point.  We will be visiting this location again, as well as many other beautiful sites in the Park, all of them an easy busride from our Gardiner classroom. You can read more about the seminar on this link, and I'll be writing more about it in coming days. My colleague Alan Peterson will be teaching just before me: Drawing the Landscapes of Yellowstone, and he'll be giving an evening lecture for us on Gunnar Widforss, one of the finest painters of the national parks. Yellowstone Association members can register for these courses beginning February 6, 2013 at 8am. General registration begins one week later. Consider becoming a member: your membership will benefit countless projects like visitor centers, roadside educational exhibits, and printed materials for park visitors.

Yellowstone Elk: A Painting's Progress

Over several fall seasons, I viewed elk at Yellowstone, often in the Gardner River below Mammoth Hot Springs, where they gather in great numbers for the fall rut. I took many photos and last month in my wildlife class I put together a few of my favorites, sketching them in walnut ink in my journal. I began with a light pencil sketch, done freehand, and then used a reed pen,favored by artists like Van Gogh--this is one that someone collected from a waste area near a freeway and which I cut with an x-acto blade into an angled nib. I used a brush and water to dissolve some of the line. I never get tired of the effects of walnut ink--it has to be my favorite sketching medium!  I used this sketch as a preliminary drawing for a painting, which I submitted to Pomegranate Communications for the upcoming 2014 Nature's Peace calendar. They are already in production--we just finalized the images last week. This painting turned out to be one not chosen, but it often happens that way--I probably submit 4 paintings for every one that is chosen.  I stretched the watercolor paper and then made a photocopy of my drawing, enlarged it to the correct size for my painting and then traced my enlarged copy onto the watercolor paper, using Saral transfer paper.  There are only a couple of elk cows in this group--the rest are young males, non-combatants.  The big bulls are elsewhere, rounding up their mates, and looking for other bulls to fight. These tranquil youngsters always appeal to me, which is not to say it isn't very entertaining to watch the big battles!

Library Programs: Artists in the Parks

Yesterday I offered  programs at the Marysville and Granite Falls Libraries on sketching and painting in the National Parks. Many enthusiastic patrons came, all set to look at natural specimens, sketches and my photos and try their own hands at creating art inspired by the Parks. I was delighted at how warmly they responded to everything. What a fun day! We used a variety of media, which gives everyone the opportunity to see how simply and easily you can work outdoors.

Yellowstone Sketch: Canary Spring

We sketched at Canary Spring in September when I visited with my Yellowstone Institute class; in previous posts I have featured students' work. This is what I came up with and I was happy with the ethereal quality of it--for me this is what watercolor can do like no other medium. I think John Henry Twachtman's oil paintings of the pools are marvelous, but few other oil paintings have done them justice. I've been re-reading John Berger, whose thinking on art was so seminal in the 70s. In Ways of Seeing he talks about the contrast between oil painting and watercolor: What distinguishes oil painting from any other form of painting is its special ability ro render the tangibility, the texture, the lustre, the solidity of what it depicts. It defines the real as that which you can put your hands on. It is interesting to note here the exceptional case of William Blake. As a draughtsman and engraver Blake learned according to the rules of the tradition. But when he came to make paintings, he very seldom used oil paint, and although he still relied upon the traditional conventions of drawing, he did everything he could to make his figures lose substance, to become transparent and indeterminate one from the other, to defy gravity, to be present but intangible, to glow without a definable surface, not to be reducible to objects. This wish of Blake's to transcend the 'substantiality' of oil paint derived from a deep insight into the meaning and limitations of this tradition. Blake found watercolor more appropriate for his purposes, and it's that vaporous quality that I love so much. It captures the fleeting moment and experiences that pass away before we can even really register them, before they solidify into memories.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone: Plein Air Sketch

Here's my plein air watercolor sketch of the scene I wrote about a few days ago. You can see my pencil lines still evident, especially the ones on the far side of the canyon. I never painted the spires, as they weren't visible until the sun came out at the end of our session there, casting shadows that sculpted the forms. The light was a little bit on the gloomy side, and I have been giving some thought to painting a larger studio work from this sketch. I like the low light, the forbidding aspect of the Canyon. This trip to Yellowstone I found I was looking for the lesser known places, the quieter spots, sites where the Yellowstone mystique may not interfere so much with my own immediate reaction. So many artists have focused on the amazing colors of the Canyon, and rightly so. That is perhaps the most striking thing about it. But this year I was especially moved by the the deepness of it, the sheer cliffs, the immense power behind the falls. When I visited the Brink of the Lower Falls, I could feel my body quivering a little from vibrations sent out from the water movement. It was positively thrilling, but with a small element of fear thrown in. To be that close to something so inherently powerful and dangerous lets you partake of those qualities, just a little bit.  As my students and I sat on the trail just above the steep walls of the canyon, I had a similar feeling. So close to the precipice, to the possibility of falling.  I want to convey something about that in my painting. And maybe it will be something new, that other artists have not felt or seen.

More Student Work from Yellowstone

I am sharing more of the work my students created in the workshop I taught for the Yellowstone Institute. It's not entirely fair to call these sketches and paintings "student work", as so many of the workshop participants were students in name only and were very competent and talented artists. But it was a pleasure to have them join me and demonstrate their skills outdoors. This is Babs Vanyo's sketch of Canary Spring--in the distance is Mt. Everts.   Below is Karin Connelly's diptych sketch of the same place. On the left she has focused on the dead trees--both artists created compelling portraits of the trees. On the right Karin has looked more at the colors in the pools and at Mt. Everts. 

More Student Sketches from Yellowstone

 Karin Connelly did this wonderful energetic sketch of Electric Peak and the north edge of Swan Lake in the watercolor class I taught for the Yellowstone Institute. She was working on a fairly smooth piece of paper, which allows for a more textural approach, very appropriate for all the grasses and low shrubs of the Flat. Swan Lake Flat is one of my favorite places in all of Yellowstone. One morning I drove out quite early and discovered frost on the sedges and grasses at the lake's edge. Only a short distance from the Park's main road, but early enough in the day to be away from the major traffic movements, we listened for the huge silences of the Park, and were treated to a beautiful distant chorus of wolf voices singing out to each other. To my ear, it seemed to be sung in a minor key, but I think I may have been projecting a human autumn melancholy onto the wolves.
To the right is another of Karin's fine sketches--this one was done in Porcelain Basin at Norris Geyser Basin.  I appreciate the economy of brush strokes in this sketch, and I was very impressed at how Karin was able to show the  scalloped edges along the inner edge of the pools.

Yellowstone Paintings: Student Work

Seen left is the lovely painting Babys Vanyo did from her sketch (pictured on the right) of the Canyon. Notice how in her sketch she began with a monochrome thumbnail, then a color thumbnail, finally scaling it up to a bigger and more detailed sketch. I also find it interesting to see her thought process between sketch and more finished studio painting. She emphasized the pinks and golds, carved out the rocks and cliffs more sharply, and added elegant foreground tree shapes, mirroring the spires on the cliffs. I will be featuring more of Babs' work on this blog in coming days, and also other students (who have kindly shared their work with me) from the workshop I taught last week at the Yellowstone Institute.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Last week I taught a plein air watercolor painting workshop for the Yellowstone Institute. This was my fourth consecutive year of teaching, and for the first time we visited the canyon, thanks to the suggestions of one of my students. The canyon has been a favorite of many of the artists who've painted in Yellowstone. You can read more about them in the article I wrote for the Yellowstone Association's magazine Discovery. The meditation on the place that occurs while sitting in one spot for a long time, drawing and painting, is one way I have found of getting beyond the more Disney-esque aspects of Yellowstone. My student found this out-of-the-way location, and we all sat quietly contemplating the beauty, giving it our utmost attention. I have photographed it in many light conditions and the first day I was there without my students, the morning began foggy. Later it cleared, revealing more shapes and colors. The day my class visited began overcast and shapes were not well-defined: the distant canyon walls were barely distinct from the foreground walls.     

Just before we finished our sketching and painting the sun came out, revealing spires on the other side of the canyon.