Pleinair Painting

THE COVID HOLDING PATTERN  I've logged several thousand air miles in my lifetime. And during those miles, there were many hours spent either on the ground waiting to fly or in the air waiting to land. The worst, in my opinion were the hours spent circling and circling in a holding pattern over the city that was your destination...waiting to land...waiting to land...waiting to land. Every half hour or so, the captain would get on to explain the situation, or sometimes not to explain it...but just to say something to the uncomfortable passengers. See, there were two problems. The first problem was not that we couldn't land, but that we had a destination to get to and we couldn't get there because something or someone was holding us up and we usually weren't told exactly what it was. The second problem was that we didn't know how long we were going to be up there circling and circling. The second problem was really the kicker. Because you could make contingency plans i...

MURALS FOR LLOYD BRIDGES TRAVELAND RV Back in 2002, I was asked to paint the largest mural of my painting career. The mural took 9 months to complete after I had toured several national parks in the Grand Circle out west. There were several challenges on the job. One was working with scaffolding that was 25ft in the air. When I was on the top level, the platform swayed with my brush movement, or when someone opened the bay doors. It was a little terrifying, so I worked with climbing gear and strapped myself to the ceiling. The second challenge was transferring the design to the wall. Often I use a projector to transfer since all I need is a simple outline to start getting the proportions right. But the site had huge windows in the front and there was no way to darken down the space with all the street lights. So I had to use an Old Master's Grid System transfer technique that took several days longer for each section. The other challenge was the blending of one scene into the next,...