David's "Sketching Utah" thread.

[Joan T]

The museum looks like it should be in southern California with that Spanish look to it. Nice!!! Love the farm with the horse in the field. You really got a few different views.

[DrDebby]

Great sketches. You caught enough of the horse in the farm scene that you know it's a horse in the field. It adds to the atmosphere of the piece.

[Davkin]

Thanks Joan, Debby.

It's been a while since I posted new sketches. I have been involved in art related acrtivities, just not sketching trips. It was good to get outside with the sketchbook again today. I decided to make the trip about 60 miles south and west of Salt Lake City to Elberta. There isn't much to Elberta, maybe a couple dozen homes, a dairy farm and a granary but it also has one of my favorite landmarks, a very old Sinclair gas station;



This old structure was originally in Eureka which is another 10-12 miles west and was moved to Elberta some time in the late 60's. It was still some kind of convenience store up until the 80's I beleive. This structure is at the junction of highway 6 (runs east to west) and highway 88 (north to south) right in the center of Elberta. Highway 6 actually gets quite a bit of traffic due to the fact that it's the highway you take from I-15 to get to the Little Sahara sand dunes. In spite of all that traffic no commercial venture has been able to survive in little Elberta.

Of course being this close I had to venture on to Eureka. In stark contrast to Elberta's agricultural environs Eureka is purely about the mining. The flatlands surrounding Elberta and other small towns in the area give way to rocky desert mountains as you approach Eureka which is in the heart of the Tintic Mining District. This place was bustling with mining activity from the late 1800's and into the mid 1900's with hundreds of small mines and a few large ones. There is still mining in the area but nothing like it was at it's peak and much of Eureka's main street is now vacant and even falling down. That's not to say that Eureka is in any danger of becoming a ghost town, there is still some mining activity and many of those people with their recreational toys headed to the dunes make a pit stop at the gas station/convenience store in downtown, though there is little other commercial activity on main street, just a gun shop and an antique store from what I can tell. The town is full of history though and it's fun to walk around and take photos. There is a mining museum but I've never seen it open, but at least they have a lot of interesting stuff sitting outside. One of the oddest curiosities is the relocated cabin of Porter Rockwell, a famous figure from Mormon history, a body guard to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and who's exploits the Tom Berenger Movie "The Avenging Angel" was at least partly based on. Well, I got wordy again, sorry about that but this is an interesting little town if you stop to take the time to look around a bit.

I decided to sketch another bit of history, the first LDS (mormon) chapel built in the area, I think the plaque said 1902 but I don't remember for sure;

The building is now a registered historical landmark and appears to be no longer used as a meeting house but I don't know what it's currently used for.





Near the Porter Rockwell cabin was this little scene;



It was obviously set up but you see fun little displays of old mining equipment all over this town so I couldn't resist sketching one. I was smart this time and sketched this pen drawing in my bristol smooth sketchbook, works much better then sketching on watercolor paper. I don't know why I did the last few pen sketches on watercolor paper, slip of the mind I guess.

David

[poochemio]

Looks like a fun sketching trip. The mining setup looks pretty true to form though it's staged. Every place I've been where there were mines has the old ore carts, and of course the little structures going into the tunnels. You are getting quite subtle with your watercolors. Lovely.

[Davkin]

I just got back yesterday from a three day trip to Southern Utah. Of course I brought my sketching materials with me and made plenty of sketches, so much so that I decided to break the posts up into three sections, one for each day and will post each day a couple days apart. I know for many people the landscapes I've been sketching are not what they think about when they think of Utah. For most people from outside Utah the mention of the state conjures up images of huge, natural red rock arches, hoodoos and bristlecone pines. That scenery is common in the southern half of the state, however I live in northern Utah and those things just don't exist here, at least not in the same scale. Thanks to my trip this week you'll now finally get to see some sketches of the typical Southern Utah terrain, if you can call these kinds of views typical.

I started out with Bryce Canyon National Park. I was on the freeway by 7:00 am and it took me nearly four hours to reach the park entrance. Since all the view points are on the East side of the road, (to the left as you drive up) the best thing to do is drive right to the top first which I did. The first thing I did was walk the Bristlecone loop trail that goes around the very end of the park and gives you the only views in the park of the west side. Of course with a name like Bristlecone loop the trail has plenty of Bristlecone pine trees on it. Bristlecones are one of my favorite trees, they create such interesting shapes, so my first sketch was a pen sketch of a dead Bristlecone right on the rim.



After finishing the trail I ate my packed lunch and started making my way down the park to check out all the viewpoints on the east side. There are many viewpoints on the park, so many so that it was taking much more time than I expected to see them all. I had planned on going on a hike but with the time constraints and the fact that all the trails are way steeper than I realized I decided to abandon that idea. I also didn't do as much sketching as I would have liked, again the time constraints were an issue but also the fact that nearly every viewpoint had quite a few tourists and there wasn't really much room to get away from them. At the second to last viewpoint, Sunset Point I found a nice spot away from the crowds just off the Rim Trail where I could enjoy some quiet time while I sketched.



I left the park a little after 5:00 pm which left me enough time to stop at Red Canyon and take some photos. State Road 12 runs through Red Canyon which is how you get to Bryce Canyon from the west. Red canyon is kinda like being inside a small version of Bryce Canyon but looking up from the bottom instead of down from the top. I took plenty of photos but didn't have time to sketch, I wanted to make it to my hotel in Cedar City by dark, another 1 1/2 hours of driving.

Well, that was the first day of my trip, sorry I only had two sketches from it. I need to make another trip to Bryce Canyon but spend three days there, especially if I can get into good enough shape to handle those steep trails. The next post will be about the day I spent at Cedar Breaks National Monument, I got four sketches in on that day.

David

[DrDebby]

Your sketches are so delightful to see. I feel like I'm getting a tour of Utah.

[poochemio]

Sounds like a wonderful trip David, and the first installment of sketches are super, that pine tree is very interesting, no wonder you like to sketch them.

[vhere]

lovely sketches - and the travelogue aspect really adds to the interest as you'd hoped

[Davkin]

Thanks Debby, I'm glad you're enjoying the tour.

Thanks Margo, more interesting trees to come, soon.

Thanks Vivien. I'm not really a writer, is my writing at least clear?

David

[Davkin]

Day Two..... I got up early, (it's not like I sleep well at hotels anyway) and headed back up SR 14 from Cedar City to spend the day at Cedar Breaks National Monument. Cedar Breaks is similar to Bryce Canyon though much smaller and with a somewhat different feel. For one thing the crowds are much smaller, in fact there really isn't any at all. Also, Cedar Breaks is at a higher altitude, nearly 10,500 ft at the highest part of the rim while Bryce tops out at nearly 9,000 ft. It was a bit cool but my plan was to hike the rim trail so I figured I'd work up enough heat anyway and left the jacket in the car. The rim trail at Cedar Breaks isn't long, just 4 miles round trip with two named overlooks. The trail climbs a bit the first half mile but then descends the rest of the way. The first stop was Spectra Point which is about a mile from the trailhead. The section of the trail to Spectra Point is almost entirely very near the rim and out in the open, only a small section of the trail leaves the rim but even then not very far. The most interesting thing to me about the area around Spectra Point is the high concentration of bristlecone pine trees, so I had to sketch one of course;

This was actually only part of one tree that had two main trunks. This trunk was dead, the other trunk was very much alive. That's one of the interesting things about bristlecones they are often half dead but the half that's alive often is very much so. Also it's interesting how they pick the most inhospitable places to take root. They are always near the rim, where they get almost constantly whipped by the wind and get very little moisture. They estimate this particular tree is over 1600 years old!


From Spectra Point it was another mile to Ramparts Overlook. The trail from Spectra to Ramparts was very different. It wound down into the forest for a while before returning to the rim, you could even hear the trickle of a tiny stream for much of the hike. I decided to attempt a more grand view in the next sketch;

A small sketch like this or even a large photograph can't even begin to do justice to this scene. This is looking at the south wall from Ramparts Overlook. I was by myself for an hour and a half, I didn't even hear another human for all that time, I can't begin to describe the feeling, you feel so small, yet so priviledged to be there and so connected to nature.

The hike back to the trail head was only two miles, but almost all uphill, so I decided to take a break and sketch this odd little scene;

A relatively young bristlcone pine is barely hanging on at the top of a small red rock pillar. This was actually very close to the trail, but not quite close enough to get to, there was a dangerous gap between the cliff side and the pillar. The tree has even gone so far as to run a root right along a crevice in the rock, however such action could speed it's demise if that root eventually breaks the rock apart. You see many dead bristlecone pines littering the slopes of the monument walls.

After much effort I made it back to the trailhead. There aren't nearly as many overlooks at Cedar Breaks as there are at Bryce Canyon, just the two that you have to hike to and four that you can drive to. I checked out the rest of the overlooks and then ate my packed lunch, then took a short nap. I was feeling pretty beat up but I decided to hike the Alpine Pond Trail, a 2 mile loop. There isn't a lot of climbing on this trail, but enough when you are already tired. The Alpine Pond Trail winds through a small forest at the top of the monument. The trail does go by a portion of the rim providing some views into the monument but that's not what this trail is about. This is just a nice stroll though an alpine forest, a relatively lush forest for such a high elevation. I did a sketch at the pond of course;

This pond is rather small and shallow, maybe 60 ft long by 40 ft wide and so shallow and clear you can see all of the bottom from the shoreline. Hard to beleive you can have a scene like this right next to all the red rock.

Next post will be about scenery in and near Cedar City.

David

[DrDebby]

Beautiful scenery and unique trees.

[poochemio]

What incredible trees! That must have been an amazing hike, what you sketched is lovely. Don't think I'd have the nerve to brave such an arduous hike alone.

[vhere]

Originally Posted by Davkin

Thanks Vivien. I'm not really a writer, is my writing at least clear?

David

it is and really adds to the images for me - the scenery is so different, so unlike our scenery even though ours is so very varied

[Joan T]

These are great!!! I like the sketch of the old garage and the mine, but the ones from Bryce are super. I like how you focused on a small section in most of them. I found when I went to the Grand Canyon and did a few sketches that the scenery was so overwhelming that I had a hard time. Usually if I focused on a specific area of rock that was sticking out, I had an easier time. Thanks for sharing the sketches and your descriptions.

[Davkin]

Thanks Debby, Utah really does have it all in the way of natural scenery, or at least mostly all.

Thanks Margo. Actually, the hike wasn't that ardous, I'm just seriously out of shape. The hikes in the local mountains are far more demanding, much steeper and very rocky for the most part.

Thanks Vivien. I don't know how long I'll keep it up though, I suspect once winter sets in this blog will get replaced with a more general art blog. I'll still post sketches in this thread (or maybe start a new one) most likely but they'll be all kinds of sketches, not necessarily from life or following this theme. I'm a fair weather outdoor sketcher, and to me winter is anything but fair.

Thanks Joan. Ya, finding something to focus on at these kinds of locations is tough!

David