Pterodactyl Plains Project

"The chance is the remotest
Of its going much longer unnoticed
That I'm not keeping pace
 With the headlong human race."
                                                   Robert Frost


The weeks have flown by.....   I have to ask why the days seem to go into fast forward yet my work seems to go into slow motion?  What is up with that?  I am currently working at finishing up the album art for the new Pterodactyl Plains  indie album.  This will be the second piece of their work that I have covered with my art.  I am also recording my own album with them under the name of "The Golden Morning", we started recording last week.  So on top of all this I am starting a new side project, which I will be getting up on FB and Myspace before to long.  


So after Pterodactyl Plains I have one more project that is commissioned and then I am home free to explore some much need new territory in my own world.  Not to mention finish some embryos of work that screams for birth....

Sophy Morigeau's Trading Post

Sophie Marigeau was half Shuswap Native American and half French. She is a thing of legend, having eight husbands, being a renown business woman and trader, and founder of one of the first trading posts on the Tobacco Plains north of Eureka Montana.

This painting was commissioned for Tim Mikita's private gallery and collection from the Kootenai region. It is a wet-on-wet water color on handmade paper from Porridge Papers Lincoln, Nebraska. It measures 12.5 in by 25 in. in length. The painting was inspired by one of the few photos known of Sophie's camp. The photo is displayed in the book The Story Of The Tobacco Plains by Olga Weydemeyer.

Watercolor Painting From Old Photographs

I have folks periodically request techniques used on certain pieces of art work I do. I have also found that many people find the PROCESS of making art fascinating even if they are not artist's themselves. This is for the enthusiast on ether side of the spectrum. -A.S.Q.

(Note: the photos showing examples of me working may not correspond to my written instructions. I repent for this and am trying to find a solution with the formatting.)

1. Find a photo you are interested in painting, measure the photo and use the measurements to enlarge the image to the correct dimensions that correspond with your photo. You may want to keep the image the same size, I still recommend measuring the photo to make sure your paper or canvass size is the correct. This will help you in the drawing process.

2. Unless you are a master draftsmen and can sketch picture perfect it will be a huge help for you to take tracing paper and trace your subject. You can then put marks, for points of reference, with your pencil to help keep you from making subjects in the photo to large or to small. It makes the sketching simpler, if you want to be in a hurry though don't do it and get your self frustrated.....

3. After you have cut your paper (I am using handmade rag paper from Porridge Papers in Lincoln, Nebraska) to the dimensions your measurements, ether being multiplied or divided, indicate and after you have attached it to a hard backing then proceed. Make small marks to indicate points of reference on your paper. This is for your drawing and will make your drawing more accurate and easier to execute. Start your light sketch, and I mean LIGHT, with a pencil. You want to just barely be able to see you lines. Use the little points of reference you marked on the side of your paper to keep you subjects in perspective.

4. I wet my paper down with clean water and large 2 inch brush. I then added a very light wash of Raw Sienna to give the over all image a warm mid summer feeling. (The limited palette that I used for the piece, as an example, was chosen for it's rustic look. I wanted the painting to have a sense of antiquity that the photo represented. I also wanted to give the painting a feeling of mid to late summer. This palette works great for that!)

5. Flipping the painting upside-down I then add a light wash of Sepia, let that soak in for a few minutes and then add another light wash of Prussian Blue. Be careful with Prussian Blue it is a very powerfully deep pigment, so use it with care or it will take over you entire piece. I then add, in places, a thinker wash of Raw Sienna once again. I let it all run and mix, using water to mix or wash places were the color is to concentrated. After it has dried sufficiently I then turn the painting right side up once again.

.6 Always working from background to foreground I use Green Earth (or any green with a bit of blue hue to it) for the back ground hills. I add the color as a back ground color for the foreground trees and bushes as well.

7. Using Sepia I darken up the foreground tree line. I also us it to start putting shadowing into the teepees and cabin.

8. Putting Prussian Blue in a deep wash I both darken up the foreground tree line and with a wash of Sepia give it a greenish blue tone that corresponds with the evergreen colors of Montana.

9. For the mid ground, which is a possible field behind the two figures on the right, I used a light wash of Burnt Sienna. This pigment has a red tone to it. I bring it in to the for ground just slightly.

10. Now it is time for details. I add a hint of Crimson to the shirt and dress of the figures on the right. Also a bit of Prussian Blue washed in with the Crimson. This is to draw your attention to the figures being that I chose them to be the subject of the painting. I then start to add details with a very fine pointed brush and a very heavy Sepia wash. It all most looks black if layered heavily.

11. After letting it dry set it a side for a couple days and then evaluate it. If it has enough redeemable qualities, to keep it from being used as fire starter, then sine it. Remember to buy some U.V. protectant fixative and give it several coats for archival prepossess when you are finished.

Note: Remember, watercolor is a very hard medium to work in. It is like a cat, it does what it wants when ever it can get away with it. If you are doing WET ON WET, meaning putting your washes on top of wet paper or other wet pigment, it takes a lot of practice. Start with small sheets of paper and work up to bigger sheets once your confidence and skill level rises. It is also O.K. to generate fire starter; meaning that you aren't failing by not getting the desired results immediately. Most pro artist in general will admit that they throw away or cover up sixty to eight percent of their work before they get something they really like. That is a lot of fire starter:)

Material: Watercolor brushes: 2 in. flat, 1 in. flat, and a fine pointed detail brush. Paints: Raw Sienna, Sepia, Burnt Sienna, Prussian Blue, Crimson, Green Earth (blue hue).

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

"The reason artists show so little interest

In public freedom is because the freedom

They've come to feel the need of is a kind

No one can give them--they can scarce attain--

The freedom of their own material:

So, never at a loss in simile,

They can command the exact affinity

Of anything they are confronted with."

Robert Frost from:"How hard it is to keep

From being king when

It's in you and in the situation"

It has been a while sense I last posted, sense last May I believe. What happened? Well let me tell you......

It was space aliens.

There are moments or months when in hindsight you are able to look back and think: "Wow, I did a lot of growing at that point." This always helps me feel really smart at the present moment, I point out at past memories with a laughing finger; "Would you take a look at that sucker back there (snicker, snicker) who did he think he was? What a bunch of lame ideas and naive beliefs!!!" Then I give my own ass a kick and tell it to get in line; "If you hadn't been there you wouldn't be here you silly muff!" Yaaaaa, so self gratitude only goes so far, even with my self.

So you are probably wondering what I learned over the eight and a half months I have written nothing and for all plausible reasons seemed to have been abducted by space aliens or weird corn farmers in Nebraska. Well, maybe you aren't wondering but I am going to divulge my great knowledge upon you anyway. These will be mainly notes for the artist that is trying to do and sell work, because that is what I do:) You may disagree but unless you are an artist and have more experience I will only laugh at you, and I may laugh at you any way:-)

Thoughts After My First One Man Art Show:

1. Never let any one person tell you which is the best of Your Work and which does not hold up to Par.

2. Do not price your work on the merit of what you give a piece. An artist will always look at their work through different eyes than the client. There are pieces that I do that I know aren't perfect in all their qualities and that can make me bias towards certain pieces while my audience only sees what they are and aren't draw to.

3. Chiggers will go through socks and lace holes in shoes.

4. The audience's judgement of your work tells you more about the audience than it does about your work. (When I was in Nebraska I had several people point out how sexual my work was. When I asked them why they thought that one said "Well, you know? You have that one with the orgy in it and several others with people having sex." I tried to be tactful and ask her which pieces these were, when she pointed them out I did my best to just nod and smile. Clouds and shadows to me, to her they were explicitly sexual images. Granted some of my work is sexual but the funny thing was that the pieces I did purposely put sexual themes in never got commented on as having such.

5. Always have fun!!! Don't let some one pressure you into doing something that isn't fun. Art shouldn't be a big theme for stress. When I am not having fun I realize that I have to check my motives behind what I am doing and why. When the joy goes out of it and it becomes all serious and life threatening it is time to pull back and take another look at what you are doing. I don't get paid well enough yet with my art for it to be stressful, so forget it man, I am not going there. In fact even when I am getting dropped six figures I am not going there, money isn't worth it ether:)

Three Weeks To Take Off.....

"Lucklessly she must lie patient

And the vaulting bird be still. O my true love, hold me.

In your every inch and glance is the globe of genesis spun,

And the living earth your sons."

Dylan Thomas

Three weeks left and then I rome, after close to two years grounded and working. When on the Missouri River, madly paddling for St. Louis a thousand miles away, there was ample time to check my reality; what I was doing as a man of twenty-nine and what I hoped to accomplish in my life time. There was plenty of time for reflexions like these to the rhythm of paddle strokes, the twisting river or the far horizon stretched out across the lakes. I grappled with my feelings of how only my painting seemed keep a hold of me, the rest didn't seem to make a lot of sense. It is easy to talk to God when you find your self in a vast landscape, when you are but a speck bobbing through the Great Plains. So talk I did and I spoke my needs. If I was to be a full time artist I needed direction. A month later I found it, though at the time I didn't know it.

It is said to be careful of what you ask for in life for you just might get it. I have been listening to Homer's Iliad and there is a story of a man who is given one wish from a god. He asks the god to make everything he touches turn to gold. He is amazed at how it works, it is so beautiful and the gold so pure and rich. He knows he will soon be the richest man in the world, all he has to do is go on touching his surroundings. Then he finds out that he can't eat gold, this proved a problem do to the fact that you have to touch to eat. He asks the god to take it away and he was granted his second wish as well. In three weeks I will be leaving for my first One Man Art show at a gallery in Brownsville Nebraska. From there I am not sure were the road may lead me. The last year and a half I have been in a long distance mentorship with my artist friend Harry Waldemar Anderson, who is a resident of Brownsville. Over this time period he has helped me grow in my abilities as an artist and as he says there is little more he can teach me at this point. I have also massed over eighty pieces of work, fifty of those piece will go into the gallery showing. On looking back I had no idea what I was asking for when I made my prayers over the river, I had no idea of the painful hours upon hours of trying to work out a problem. I had no idea what I would have to give up to take hold of my dream yet I am not asking for it back ether like the guy with the golden touch. There is a road to travel and I just have to travel it. It could be only for curiosities sake.

Requiem for the Silver Lining

"And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea."

T.S. Eliot (The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

We roll to the sky then dip to see the water, the 5.0 liter Cummings diesel engine wines as Flathead Lake bounces in and out of view. I notice silver lining on the fur and pines along side the road, the light doesn't look this way but only in the spring. Something todo with being washed by winter and reflected with both the cold and the recreation of spring. And the clouds tower in cumulous mass trailing showers over the Rockies.

"This is more like a roller coaster ride than a road!" Dennis states flat and Fig and I laugh and agree. A new road is going in and it will be easier to reach our destination the next visit we make. That and for who ever else wishes to go and that is the bitter sweet part of a new road. I spot sheep up the rocky slope and we slap into the ditch to pull binoculars from the center counsel and watch what was lighter specks of rock become Big Horn's. There aren't a lot of them left so there is always general excitement when they are spotted. We cot site of four more little clusters and counted up wards of fifty altogether, for any of us this made the drive worth while and we settled back for more "roller coaster" action.

The Symes Hotel in Hot Springs Montana still feels to hold the belief of the mystical healing power of the Thirties, when it was built. The Spanish never found El Dorado nor The Fountain Of Youth, they packed their armer from one end of the country to the next and down into the jungles of South America. They were to be eaten alive by worms, never finding everlasting life on earth or unquenchable wealth. By the time the nineteen thirties rolled around Percy Fawcet had disappeared into the Amazon, never to be seen again, totally convinced a lost city did exist. By the time they got done looking for him, the searchers had ether died or found nether Fawcet or the Lost City but had pretty much been over the entire region. By the time the Symes was built W.W.II was just getting kicked off and W.W.I had shattered the belief that the industrial age was going anywhere special. So I guess the investors of this new resort, in the middle of nowhere, must have thought that the sacred indian hot springs and their bubbling waters would be an irresistible draw to the disillusioned but fabulously wealthy cattle, mining, and logging barons of the new state. If they couldn't find El Dorado or The Fountain of Youth then maybe they could believe that some bubbly water could heal their gout.

As I sat watching the little bubbles attach themselves to my leg hair I felt I maybe understood why they would feel healed. People spoke in whispers here and those whispers felt like echos in a vast space. It was early afternoon by the time we had arrived and there were few people to disturb the soaking. Rain showers filtered down on all four sides of the valley yet our island of bubbles sat untouched. A gentleman of the late nineteen seventies/early eights sat beside me and made a comment on the massing rain clouds. I said how much I enjoyed them and he whispered back "oooooh, yaaaa". I felt happier, strangely, that I could share a moment were some one else was enjoying the clouds as I. Then he started to talk, a little louder with each sentence. There was Fig, Dennis, man with smudged skull with rose tattoo on his arm, chubby wife, empty eyed local indian woman and white toothless boyfriend, me and my want-a-be Jimmy Buffet talker getting baked and fizzed. The silence being broken, the speed of acceleration is a wind fall. Through the gate walks two women in ripe early twenties with a bearded man who might be the same but looks early forties. I scoot closer to Dennis as much to get away from the enlarging mouth of Mr. Buffet as to be polite to the new arrivals at my back. They slip in, giggle, two day old booze oooozing from there smooth round skin. "Don't look!" I tell my self but the peripheral is to close and you see with out seeing. The Faded look at them with envious eyes, I feel sick from the contrast. Conversation is moved to the Mandan Indians, El Dorado that was mountains of corn, and Karl Bodmer's paintings. A speech for the new arrivals ensued, moving to what is truly art; he looks at me to agree. Or maybe at the breasts behind my shoulder, his sunglass block the movements of his eyes. I overheat and sit back up on the ledge, ask Dennis if he wants to go. He nods yes but doesn't move. Her pink toenail brushes my leg slightly as she swings her long legs out. "Shit" I think "I should have made eye contact, and then she wouldn't have done that." To not accede to beauty is a personal affront to the holder, it is cruel and punishing to them, for their beauty tents to be all that they have and Ponce de Leon never found the Fountain of Youth. The three move to the cooler pool and Dennis says he is ready to go. I ask him if he had used the shorts, he had lent me, as an oil rag as we move clock wise around the bathers. I make a fateful glance at the pool as I leave, she stares holes in me. I wonder who is profaning beauty more; me for refusing to notice or her acknowledging to flaunt it?

Stopping at the Tamarack in Lakeside we eat our fill, Fig and I share a pitcher of the newest brew on tap. Pulling out of the parking lot we stop to wait for a man with suspendered pants pulled to his armpits and three gallon size growlers clutched in hand. "He has got two!" exclaims Fig "No, he's got three." I respond. "Ya.......... we should mug him." says Dennis.

Walking On Egg Shells

"You can read the life your living but you can't change a word."

Leonard Cohen

"Creatures of mercy

Shoot me down

And set me free"

Bat for Lashes (the horse and I)

I remember thinking when I was in high school that as soon as I could I would get out of the troubles that surrounded me. I could go some where else and find peace and safety from these troubles. I went a many places, for quite a few years.