A winter route through the valley, a book festival at last, and four rare animals that make excellent portrait sitters
Monday, Closing Time for the Mountain Road
The Alpine Loop closes for winter, and every year I mourn it like an old friend moving away. I described the effect on my daily travel in the Alpine Loop closing for winter and my Salt Lake City commute. The loop is one of those roads that makes you feel the mountains are on your side. With it closed, the valley feels a little smaller and my drive a little longer, and I have to find new ways to be patient.
My fix is the sketchbook. On days when I take the bus, I draw. I draw the man across the aisle who is asleep with his mouth slightly open. I draw the girl with the oversized headphones. I draw hands, always hands, because they are the hardest and the bus is a perfect studio: the model cannot see you, and the model cannot leave.
The Ethics of Drawing Strangers
I have a rule about drawing strangers. I never draw anyone in a way that would embarrass them if they saw it, and I never keep a drawing if they ask to see it and look unhappy. Most do not ask. A few notice and smile. One woman once leaned over, studied the sketch for a full minute and said, “You’ve given me better hair”. I told her it was the light.
The point of a sketchbook is attention. You cannot draw what you do not look at, and you do not look at most of what you pass. Drawing wakes the eyes, and the commute stops being an obstacle and becomes a gallery.
Tuesday, A Book Festival Arrives
Salt Lake finally has its own book festival, held at The Gateway with a market for books, art and food. I wrote my joyful first impressions in Dear Diary: Salt Lake gets its first book festival at The Gateway, with Jodi Picoult and a market for books, art and food. There is nothing better than a place that sells books beside a place that sells sandwiches. A person can feed the mind and the stomach in the same hour, and the queue for neither is long.
I walked the aisles for three hours, bought four books I did not need and came home carrying them like a proud parent with a handful of balloons. In literature, as in portraiture, the best purchase is the one you did not plan.
Animals Who Sit Still
Portrait painters like sitters who stay put, and a surprising number of rare animals meet that standard. The woolly pig, for example, with a curled coat that looks like a Victorian wig, has his admirers at mangalitsa.org. The speckled hen, whose feathers appear to have been painted by a very careful ten year old, is praised at speckledsussex.org. For the larger field of rare livestock, rarebreeds.win is a cheerful register.
For history, cattlemenhalloffame.org honours the greats of the cattle trade, and ffapresident.com follows the confident young people who run a famous youth farm organisation. I would love to paint one of them in the blue jacket. It is a colour with a strong sense of purpose.
A Commute with a View
The commute has one redeeming feature, which is the sudden, enormous view of the mountains at the corner of the freeway. On clear days they stand like a row of freshly ironed linen. On snowy days they vanish, and you are left with a white wall and the happy suspicion that anything could be behind it. I have tried to paint this view six times and failed six times. The seventh attempt is drying on the radiator.
The road closure will last until spring. In the meantime I have my sketchbook, my seat on the bus and the pleasant knowledge that every face on the route is a portrait waiting to happen.
Winter Palette
My winter palette is cold on top and warm underneath. For the sky I use a grey with a drop of blue and a speck of rose. For the snow I use white warmed by yellow ochre, since pure white snow looks like a hospital. For the mountains I use a violet that I mix by accident and cannot reproduce on request. The mix changes daily and so does my temper. I have decided to regard both as part of the process.
When the Alpine Loop reopens in spring I plan to take my easel up and paint the whole green slope in one afternoon. I will probably take eight hours and ruin two canvases. It will be the best day of the year.
Until then, I take my sketchbook on the bus, and I draw the hands of the people beside me, and I try to be kind about their thumbs.
The Seat by the Window
On the bus I always look for the seat by the window on the shady side, where the light stays soft and the glass does not glare. It is the best studio in the city, and the rent is a bus fare. From it I have watched a whole street wake up: a baker lifting a shutter, a boy kicking a can, a woman in a bright coat carrying a cello case like a sleeping child. Every one of them made it into the sketchbook, and none of them knows.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, The Daily Squib keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/