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More Info is on our BLOG
This online gallery was started by Mr. Thomas as a place to display his early and current work. At the time he was doing oil painting demonstrations in the lobby of the Old Town Gallery in Flagstaff, Arizona. As webmaster, it is now my assignment to keep it organized and connected to sources where his work is being published. Enjoy, John Vroom
McMillan Mesa
Step by step oil painting demonstration JHThomas
This painting is SOLD - $6000
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I live next to McMillan Mesa in Flagstaff, Arizona. I walk part of it nearly every day. Over 25 years of observation and careful looking I've discovered that it is banquet of living things. One Spring, in the "Gambel Oak groves," I discovered a swarm of hundreds of Red Admiral butterflies!
This painting features a panorama of the San Francisco Peaks from McMillan Mesa in the northwest corner of Buffalo Park. Dead Arizona thistles dot the foreground amongst wintering rabbit bush, mullein and snakeweed. Basalt stones erupt everywhere! There's a bit of snow on the peaks, it's a dry winter. An old dead Ponderosa Pine lies on the ground. And a bull elk crosses the meadow in the late afternoon.
I am painting the peaks as they appeared a few years ago before recent forest fires, the bark beetle plague and commercial development. These paintings are becoming a historical record. Houses are now built into the place that became this painting as of 2005.
First picture 03/21/03... this assignment begins
Beginning the underpainting. I'm still working in the lobby of Old Town Gallery.
04/01/03...
The underpainting continues... blocking in the fallen pine tree and the San Francisco Peaks. On we go working solely for the purpose of covering the white background.
04/04/03...
The white background is covered. Only now do I begin to see what needs to be corrected, what's too light and what's too dark, too warm and too cool. It's the process.
04/09/03...
In the past few days I did a lot of modeling on the San Francisco Peaks, trying to complete the background. In landscape painting one always works from the top to the bottom, back to front. The mountain is about 85% finished now.
04/30/03...
Middleground busy work these past few days, lots of small stuff to correct and mold for effect. The biggest change you'll notice in this picture is the color change in the meadow grass color. It is now becoming more natural and other painters will recognize the purpose of the previously too orange underpainting. Its purpose is to show through the cracks and serve as a warm undercolor where light is trapped in between the blades of grass. From this point on the grass texture becomes lighter and more brittle remembering to keep the blend across the surface working. Color lightens and softens in the distances, and the lightest lights and the darkest darks are in your face. Atmosphere removes the "yellow" from every color as it moves into the distance, hence we have "purple mountains," the compliment of yellow.
I've also blocked in lots of the broken basalt stones that pepper the surface of the mesa. I've detailed the silhouettes of the far first row of trees and rebuilt the larger ponderosa in the near foreground. Through all of this I'm adding hundreds of small trees on the foothills using the newly added colors to determine how light and dark, how purple or yellow to make them. The perspective blend applies here as well.
05/06/03...
I spent my painting time today developing the middleground at the left edge of the painting. The big Juniper acquired shape and some light, the first green tree with some yellow in it. I added more detail to the Gambel Oak grove and some rock highlights.
05/08/03...
Finally, I got to do some modeling on the Ponderosa Pine trees, dead and alive! Next week, we begin modeling the bull elk.
05/21/03...
I spent the last two days working on the underpainting of the bull elk. After a few days off for my birthday, I returned to working in the gallery today. As you can see I've begun the process of placing the animal "in" the environment.
06/04/03...
The gallery has been closed for over a week, so there's been a break in the action. Today I jumped right into some of the elk detail and modeling. He's walking right through a thicket of rabbitbrush and dead mullein stalks, very natural. The rabbitbrush shown here is far from finished.