Painting the Grand Canyon

Painting the Grand Canyon

A cavernous hole that constitutes itself on this planet is known as the Grand Canyon. Each year many a caravan, including Mike Brady and his Brunch (minus the r, and plus an Alice) venture to this southwestern retreat to explore the crags and caves of the big GC. 

In honor of the subject itself, I'll intersperse relevant sentences from the chapter "Grand Canyon", excerpted from Our National Parks, a book written by Nelson Beecher Keyes in 1958, with some action shots from the watercolor painting I did there. 

Main Supplies. I like tubes just as much as cakes. Couple bottles of water. Temperature was a pleasant 85 so didn't need too too much water to carry in there.  

"In 1540 a large party of Spaniards, greedy for easy wealth, pressed up out of Mexico intent upon locating and seizing the seven mythical cities of Cibola, supposedly built of pure gold. While this was to prove a most disappointing and even tragic venture, one of its scouting parties was to have a peculiar thrill. Its members became the first white men to gaze upon "by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles"-- the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, located in what is today the northwest corner of Arizona. What they saw spread out before and below them was the world's mightiest gorge, cut in solid rock over countless ages by one of America's most determined, hardest-working rivers. This is no simple, even if deep-cut, trench, but a thousand square miles of pyramids, minarets, and strange objects carved from the most colorful rocks. It is 217 miles long, from 4 to 18 miles wide, often a mile deep, and spreads before the viewer about one billion years of the earth's [long] history." (117)

I used a mechanical pencil for the drawing, then a small amount of ult. blue and watered-down burnt sienna put in it.  I didn't bring an easel; I held it with my left hand. 

"Here the forces of nature have been turned loose to cut through layer after layer of the earth's surface that had once been laid down during millions upon millions of years on the bottom of some great arm of the ocean. Then these strata had slowly been raised above the level of the sea, and rain, snow, frost, and ice, plus running water, had gone to work to wear them down." (118)

A close-up of the start up and get-go of the painting. I was waiting to enter the darker browns and reds to create color variations. I didn't have to wait long for the paint to dry. The week before, I had been ripping paper to make a different watercolor, and the Arches paper was heavy, of a high poundage; it was so thick that as I was ripping it, it split a bit dramatically in the process, but something about its edge I ended up liking. So I left it on there.

 Week passes, and lo and behold I am sitting and looking out at the view of the GC that you see above. I said to myself, "what the heck, the cloud in the upper left resembles the bit of paper on the side of my Arches, sticking off like a fluffy white hang nail," so I realized it was not a bad idea to keep it there.

[Note: Painting trees is always a unique task. I usually look at the branches and determine what color the needles or leaves are; after that, I block off some space for groupings of foliage, however sporadically, as shown below]

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I was getting thirsty. I needed to finish what was starting to look like a fire-cracker exploding in the lower right side of the picture. It was the tree. I added in darker pigments to constitute some sort of color and value range; needless to say, one passer-by on the trail I was sitting beside, put forward the words, "you are a happy person," and so I said, "thanks" with a grin. 

"A great stream gathered the rainfall dropped from the clouds upon several thousand square miles, and began to cut a furrow, and then a trench, and at last this immense canyon.  When the Spaniards looked down upon it, thousands of feet below them, they called the stream 'Colorado', which means "red" for it was red with its great burden of soil and finely ground rock." (119)

 "Even in our own time [1957] this tireless river bears a half million tons-- 12,000 freight cars full-- of silt through the canyon on an average day.  hen it is in flood with melting snow and water in early summer, it may drive 60 times its normal load on towards Lake Mead, formed by the Hoover Damn some 260 miles downstream." (119)

Painting the rocks and stacked silt proved to be fun. There were a few times when the wind blowing in from the west would move my paper up and down, and since (as I mentioned above) I was holding it with my left hand and didn't put it on an easel, the wind moved my paper a little up and a little down, a lean to the left or right. This was fun because it caused the liquid state of the pigment to roll around the surface of the paper and made abstract rock and dirt formations. For the rocks, I tried to choose colors that were warm and sometimes cool, maybe crimson but then also hansa yellow. The birds and elk were also present on this day, and had excellent rates of response; however, one of the things I enjoyed most was how that wind moved my paper like a seismograph, materializing in the shifting and sloping shapes akin to the actual rock formation visible through the eye. 

"Although there is still a reservation in the depths of the canyon, where the Havasupai Native-Americans dwell, extensive use of the area by native people came several centuries ago when great numbers in the Southwest began to live in large communal dwellings, often build in the caverns in canyon walls. More than 600 sites at which such pueblos had been constructed in ages past have been found. IT was an untamed, little frequented region as the West was explored and began to fill with settlers.  This enormous hole in the ground, along with the wild, surging river deep within it, formed an extensive barrier.  A few trappers and prospectors ventured down its dizzy walls, and cattlemen finally made some use of the tableland along its rims.  Stories of its unbelievable wonders were probably doubted by many of their early hearers.  Then, in 1869, the courageous geologist, John Wesley Powell, led a party on a voyage of great danger and hardship down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.  His reliable report brought more and more hardy souls to the rims of this profound abyss.

"[The Grand Canyon's] popularity began to grow as the railroad at last made it more easy to visit.  Those who gazed out over this fantastic spectacle returned to sing its praises, and some to demand that the federal government take it in charge. But many obstacles stood in the way, and it was only after 33 years of determined effort that is became our fifteenth park in 1919, after having been a national monument for 11 years. Just a little over 1000 square miles of the most showy part of the canyon were placed on a park basis. Then, in 1932, an additional 196,000 acres of queer, grotesque wilderness immediately west of the park were established as a new Grand Canyon National Monument. This, in turn, adjoins the nearly 3000 square miles of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. To the east of Grand Canyon National Park lies the picturesque Painted Desert and Hopi and Navajo reservations.  This whole remarkable region is deserving of its many visitors. 

"The eastern half of the park is far more accessible. So, too, is the South Rim, which is but 59 miles from Williams and 110 from Flagstaff on heavy travelled U.S. 66. Also, it is but 6900 feet in elevation, and so 1250 feet lower than the North Rim, which makes considerable difference in weather conditions during the colder months.  The South Rim is open all the year, but many North Rim lodges are open only from June 18 to September 10, while more limited facilities are available from mid-May only to mid-October." (120)

South Rim, Desert View painting

"On the South Rim, it is possible for the highway to closely follow the edge of the canyon for some 28 miles, which permits a number of lookout points from which there are breath-taking views. Most of these are fairly close to the river, some 4500 feet below. The western portion of the South Rim may be reached a three points by a dirt road [as of 1957]. At its end, at Hilltop, there is a trail down to the Havasupai Reservation. (120)

South Rim, Desert View photo