Two Dead Animals and One Lively One

9/18/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen, 100 lb. paper

In addition to geysers, a major attraction of Yellowstone is the wildlife. Although we never saw any bears, we did see plenty of bison and some elk. Sketching them, however, was another matter. I did attempt to sketch one bison, but it’s not easy through binoculars. (I’m more impressed than ever by birders and naturalists like John Muir Laws who do much of their sketching through scopes.)

9/19/13 Bison sketched through binoculars.

Easier to sketch were the many dead animals mounted on the walls at Shoshone Lodge and Guest Ranch a few miles outside of Yellowstone. I counted 22 of them in the lobby – elk, deer, bears, moose, bobcats and even a jackalope.

9/19/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, 140 lb. paper

One lively animal kept us entertained in the car: Zia, a Chihuahua/Pomeranian mix. 

9/19/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, 100 lb. paper

9/19/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, 100 lb. paper

Speed Sketching at Yellowstone

9/19/13 Liberty Cap at Mammoth
(Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, 100 lb. paper)

For the kind of sketching I do, I usually have better results if I spend less time rather than more. The few times I have spent more than an hour on a sketch (such as my first sketch of Germany’s Köln Cathedral, which took two hours), whatever I gained in detail and accuracy, I lost in freshness and spontaneity.

At no time is it more important to sketch quickly than it is when traveling with other people. I don’t count Greg among those “other people,” because if there’s something worth sketching, there’s certainly something worth photographing, so he’s always busy with his camera. But we were visiting Yellowstone with three family members, and I wasn’t sure how patient they would be. As it turned out, they were all very tolerant of my sketching, for which I was happy and grateful.

9/18/13 Yellowstone Lower Falls, Artist's Point
(Diamine Chocolate Brown, Grey inks, 100 lb. paper)

9/19/13 Dead, gnarly tree
(Diamine Eclipse ink, Zig marker, water-soluble pencil)

9/18/13 Statue of Buffalo Bill Cody in Cody, Wyoming
(Diamine Eclipse ink, Sailor pen, 100 lb. paper)

Nonetheless, not wanting to stretch their limits, I always tried to sketch as quickly as possible. These four sketches from our second and third days at the park were all done in 10 to 15 minutes each. It helped that the weather was dreadful – very cold, rainy, sleety and windy.

Yellowstone’s Geysers

9/17/13 Old Faithful. (Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor)

Yellowstone National Park is best known for the world’s largest collection of geysers and other hydrothermal features, and the most famous of all is Old Faithful. We arrived at Old Faithful’s location shortly after it had just blown, so we had more than an hour to wait for the next one. While the others in my party took photos or killed time inside the information center, I went straight to the bleachers surrounding Old Faithful’s blow hole to stake out a seat, front and center.

I killed the hour by sketching the growing crowd and getting my paints ready for Old Faithful’s eventual eruption. A few times while we waited, a ranger shouted to the crowd that a huge storm was expected, and we were all at risk of being struck by lightning. She urged us to seek shelter immediately. Although the sky was definitely ominous, no one budged. (After waiting an hour, are you kidding?)

When Old Faithful blew at 4:12 p.m. (only three minutes later than the time predicted by the information center), my paints and I were ready.

Luckily for us, the electrical storm didn’t begin until we were back in the car.

9/17/13 Crowd waiting for Old Faithful. (Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor)

9/17/13 Geyser field. (Platinum Carbon ink, Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, watercolor)

Bozeman and on to Yellowstone

9/16/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, 140 lb. paper

In the summer of 1955, the rest of my family – my parents, my sister and my two brothers – went on a “big” road trip from Seattle to Yellowstone National Park. To give you an indication of just how big this trip was for them, my dad bought a brand new Ford station wagon to get there, and – for the first time ever – they used color film.

I know all of this because I’ve seen the photos (all 12 of them! Color film and processing were expensive) many times, and I’ve heard the stories – the many bears they saw, Old Faithful, the Liberty Cap at Mammoth. Since I was not to be born for another three years, this big road trip would always be the one that I missed.

My dad with his new Ford, 1955

This week, 58 years later, I finally caught up with the rest of my family and took a trip to Yellowstone. It wasn’t exactly a road trip – we flew to Bozeman and got into a car from there – but since we met up with three of Greg’s relatives for the visit, I sat in the back seat for three days while “dad” did the driving through the park.

These two sketches were done in Bozeman before and after Yellowstone. The top one is the view from Brad and Dee’s home surrounded by mountains. The one below was the view from our room at the Bozeman Holiday Inn Express, also surrounded by mountains. They don’t call it Montana for nothing.

9/20/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, 140 lb. paper