Rain And Fire And OK Replay

February 21, 2011

Worked on several studies this weekend. While on a walk Friday evening, I witnessed a twilight phenom on the ridges below Fortification Rock and Sugarloaf Butte, both of which are directly north of my house. As the sun sank in the west, deep shadows enveloped the rim above Sugarloaf Butte, but a narrow sliver of light arced up a low ridge and lit up an adobe home at the top of Morning Star Road. Came back to the studio and whipped this out from memory:

Missing some of the detail in the transitions, but this nails the basic phenom. Wanted to go out and study it Saturday and Sunday nights, but it rained the entire time. Will try and grab more detail this evening as the rain has mostly moved out.

Meanwhile, also worked on a dozen aerial views of Orme Ranch. KC Cassell, the new president of Orme School has commissioned me to come up with an aerial illustrated map of the buildings. It's tricky to get the scale right with the detail of the buildings, from an aerial perspective. Still struggling with it, sketches to follow.

Yesterday, I whipped out a little study called "The Fire Crept Up The Ridge."

This morning, I started a new sketchbook dedicated to my Wyatt Earp time travel project, tentatively titled: "OK Replay". Did some sketches this morning of Kid Burns trying to explain the Special Olympics to Wyatt Earp:

Full disclosure: this exchange is poached from a classic video bit by the comedian Adam Corolla, but I love it so much I have to use it even if I have to pay Adam for the privilege in the Graphic Cinema version.

Lost a week or so working on this project due to finishing the first sketchbook and then, since I didn't have any pages to work on, let it all slide. Amazing how quickly time slips by and we lose our way. Gee, I wonder what ol' W.H. has to say about this?

"You owe it to us all to get on with what you're good at."
—W.H. Auden