Painting Month: Day 13 recap

For day 13 of my painting month, I planned to make 2 paintings in Sedona, AZ. There are so many places to paint in Sedona that it’s almost overwhelming. In the end, I decided to paint Cathedral Rock and Coffeepot Rock.

Cathedral Rock

i got a tip from one of the other painters in my workshop (who happened to live in Sedona) that the best place to paint Cathdral Rock is off the Baldwin Trail in South Sedona.

I arrived at Baldwin Trailhead at 7:30am and my car’s thermometer read 14°, 15° cooler than the area of Sedona where I was staying. Hoping the other site I planned to paint was warmer, I decided to drive over there and paint that first.

Coffeepot Rock

I arrived at the Andante Trailhead at 8:26 and the 30° F temp was much more inviting. In the sun it felt even warmer than that. I started down the trail and quickly found the view I wanted to paint:

Red sandstone spires rise above juniper and scrub brush under a clear blue sky, seen across a sagebrush wash.

Well zooming in to the part I wanted to actually paint (it didn’t look as far to the naked eye):

The same rock spires seen closer, tightly cropped against the sky with a faint white contrail overhead.

I sketched out my composition and blocked in the major shapes, focusing on getting those value and temperature relationships right:

Open pochade box on a tripod, palette below mixed with maroon and olive paint; a valley of rooftops and juniper spreads out behind the easel. — Flat shapes, just blocking in

Once I had the major shapes in, I added some details and the painting came together pretty quickly:

The finished painting on the easel, with the actual sunlit rock spires visible in the background matching its composition. — Coffeepot Rock, 9x12

Close-up of the finished Coffeepot Rock study: sunlit orange rock face and a slender spire against pale sky, green scrub below.

Cathedral Rock

After taking a short lunch break, I headed back to Baldwin Trailhead and was excited when the car’s thermometer read 57° F.

A mere 250 feet in revealed a view I was excited to paint:

Cathedral Rock's paired buttes with two narrow spires between them, thin clouds streaking the blue sky above.

As usual, I started by sketching my composition:

Sketchbook page with three quick pen studies testing different croppings of the Cathedral Rock spires and foreground bushes.

After starting the first sketch by laying in the focal area (Cathedral Rock), I realized I made it too big in the frame.

The sketch in the bottom-left is the next one I tried and while the shapes were good, I wasn’t satisfied with the foreground and felt that I had slightly squished the rock on the right.

The sketch in the bottom-right was the one I went with. I liked this idea of creating a walkway into the painting by inventing some foreground bushes.

Here’s what it looked like as I got started:

Easel on a dirt trail in fading light, canvas showing a loose burnt-sienna underpainting blocking in the rock shapes.

A note here: you’ll notice my easel is not facing the subject. Something I learned in my recent workshop is that it’s beneficial to face your easel towards the sun (regardless of what you’re painting), as that will keep both your easel and your palette out of the sun. By keeping both of these in shade, it’s easier to compare colors and keeps you from painting too dark.

Followed my usual process, the next step was to block in my major shapes with the correct value and temperature (includes some minor blending):

Painting further along on the easel, a pink foreground wash added below the rock shapes; sun glare overhead, gear piled at the tripod's base.

I got cut a little short when the wind picked up and started blowing dirt everywhere. I got to a pretty good place with the painting and am still pleased overall: