Finally Finished or "The Curse of Red Rock Crossing"

Just Visiting • watercolor, 14x20"

One question I am often asked is, "how long did it take you to paint that?"

My usual answer is, "47 years" (or however old I happen to be at the time), but the truth is that some paintings take a lot longer to get done than others. This one took awhile.

I started this piece way back in March but only just finished it last week. Actual painting time was probably only 30 hours but I rarely keep track of that kind of thing. I don't usually take anywhere near this long to get a painting done, but as the great John Lennon once said, "life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

First of all, I've been working on a lot of other stuff too (stay tuned!), and second, I believe that this painting got moved to the back-burner because of something I like to call the "Red Rock Crossing Curse."

You see, this scene has been about painted to death. And the unrepentant pagan deep inside of me thinks the Rock knows it.

Every would-be, plein aire, landscape scribbler who comes to Arizona wants to take a crack at Cathedral Rock's over-the-top majestic grandeur. And who can blame them? The light around sunset time turns this scene into an almost impossible to believe Technicolor wonderland. Especially in the fall when the the clear high-desert air outlines everything in crisp detail and the cottonwood and sycamore trees turn the color of Aztec gold. Yes, folks, this is the stuff that Southwestern dreams are made of. Even without the UFO.

So the Rock gets painted. A lot. I myself have painted it at least four times. And don't even get me started on the photographers. My veracity challenged tour guide friends tell me that Red Rock Crossing is the most photographed spot on the planet. I believe them.

I also believe that the Rock is tired of being painted and photographed and just wants to be left alone at this point. So it sends out its oh-so-subtle-yet-powerful vortex energy to infect the minds of artists like myself with a desire to procrastinate almost indefinitely.

But I have fought the curse and won. The painting is finally finished and you can even own it if you like, just drop me an email and we can haggle over price. Or, you can get yourself a print here.

I think this may be the last time that I ever paint Cathedral Rock. If the urge strikes again, I plan to lie down until the feeling goes away.

Thanks for looking.
DW

© Dave Wilder

EVAA Painting Demo

Today was my watercolor demo for the El Valle Artists' Association in Cottonwood, AZ. These are great folks and they've been kind enough to have me back three times in the last couple of years. I worked on a portion of my latest piece 'Just Visiting' and answered a few questions about technique and my approach to watercolor painting. In fact, it seemed like I talked a lot more than I actually painted!
Many thanks to Judith Robinson for snapping these pictures and putting them all together.

Well, I'm off to Moab, UT first thing tomorrow morning for a week-long trip to recharge and rejuvenate. I'll be back for my EVAA watercolor workshop on the 21st.

Thanks for looking.
DW

© Dave Wilder

Just Visiting

No, I didn't paint this, but it did serve as inspiration for a new piece I'm working on:

The working title was originally "Gone Fishing", but as I was transferring the sketch to the watercolor paper I decided to leave out the fish (better to keep things simple). "Just Visiting" is the new title and the completed watercolor should measure about 14x20".

If you've never been to Sedona, Arizona you may be surprised to learn that the area is a veritable hotbed of UFO activity. At least that's what all of the crystal enlightened and oh-so-groovy New Age folks tell me. I've never actually seen a UFO myself, but I will take their word (or the word of the angels they are channeling) for it.

The above sketch is my humble attempt to depict such an alien visitation over the famed vistas of Red Rock Crossing. My tour guide friends tell me that this is the most photographed place on Earth and I have no reason to start disbelieving their lies now. However, given the shear mass of photos taken there, and the incredible volume of UFO activity in these parts, it does seem remarkable that no one has ever snapped a clear photo of a flying saucer over this locale.

Oh, well, the advantage of being an artist is that you are free to fill those inconvenient gaps in reality.

What I want to know is why an advanced space-faring alien race would want to visit a cultural backwater like Sedona anyway?. How come they never go to London or Paris? I can only assume that it must be for the pretty scenery.

If you'd like to see me work on this painting in person, you can stop by the painting demo I'll be doing for the El Valle Artists' Association in Cottonwwod on Thursday, March 12th. It starts around 6:30 pm and you can contact Gini Goldie of the EVAA for more details.

Thanks for looking.
DW

© Dave Wilder

Sonoran Skies

Just got back from a trip down to southern Arizona and the Sonoran Desert. One of the challenges of painting the desert is capturing the unique quality of the light. The air can be very clear making distant features seem almost unnaturally sharp. One of my favorite 'tricks' for creating a greater sense of depth and distance is to vary the values between foreground, middle-ground and background. In the above sketch, the foreground is in deep afternoon shadow, with the middle-ground in full sunlight contrasting against the shadowy distant mountains. The bright sunlight striking the top of the cactus lends drama to the piece while creating a visual focal point or center of interest. The sky is soft and relaxing to contrast with the sharper features of the land, and the clouds provide strong diagonals to draw the viewer into the scene.

© Dave Wilder

More Sky Sketches

Here are a couple more watercolor sketches done in preparation for my upcoming workshop. The first is sunset on the Cockscomb butte in Sedona, and the second is a monsoon storm in the hills near Jerome. August is a great time of year to do these sky sketches as we have thunderstorms and spectacular sunsets just about every afternoon. These were painted in studio following observations in the field. To be honest, I've never been much of a 'plein-air' painter. I much prefer the control I have working in studio - and I don't get bugs in my paint.

© Dave Wilder

Under Western Skies

I'm shaking the cobwebs out for an upcoming workshop I'll be leading on painting skies in watercolor. I've been sketching pretty much daily, trying to capture the color and drama of our Southwestern skies, and these two little paintings (each 14x10") are the first of many I'll be preparing for the class.


I rarely do straight landscapes anymore, but the elements of landscape - skies in particular - play an important roll in much of my work. Dramatic skies often dominate and define a landscape, but capturing them in watercolor can be a real challenge. Learning to paint clouds and skies effectively is the key to success with most watercolor landscapes, and that's why I'll be focusing on them almost exclusively in this workshop. There's a whole bag full of techniques that I use and my challenge is to distill them down into something that my students can understand and use.

This is a quick, six hour workshop, sponsored by the El Valle Arts Association in Cottonwood, AZ. The date is Saturday, September 27 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Check their website or contact me for more info.

© Dave Wilder

...And Dance by the Light of the Moon

I have been carrying this little doodle around for years.

I was at one of those outdoor art festivals in Santa Fe some years back and sales where pretty slow. I'd picked up an earworm somewhere and couldn't get this silly old song out of my head:

Buffalo Gals won't you come out tonight
Come out tonight
Come out tonight

Buffalo Gals won't you come out tonight
And dance by the light of the moon...

And on and on it went (I've since learned to play it on the ukulele). So it got me to thinking; just what the heck is (or was) a 'Buffalo Gal' anyway? I started doodling in my sales book and came up with the sketch above. I liked the composition right away and thought it might make a nice painting, but, one way or the other, I didn't get around to painting it for another five years or so.

It finally came out of hiding last winter as I was preparing for a solo show up in Jerome (cool little art town - well worth a visit). The finished watercolor painting is 20x28" and follows that original doodle pretty closely.


I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, and as is often the case, I only figured out what the painting was about long after it was finished. I think these ladies are spirits of the open prairie - they personify freedom, feminine strength and the strange, wondrous things that can happen in the wide-open spaces under a full moon.

© Dave Wilder