waterfall | Erin Bartels

The 3-Month Painting of Manido Falls

Posted on January 2, 2018January 5, 2018 by Erin Bartels

Hello, stranger! It’s 2018 and I have a moment to breathe. In fact, it’s my 38th birthday, which means I have the day to myself. Because of winter break, I never went to school on my birthday, so when I joined the working world, I decided I would never work on my birthday either. I take the day off and putz around. It’s marvelous, especially after the craziness of Christmas, my wedding anniversary, New Year’s Eve, and taking down the Christmas decorations. Added to it all this year were two and a half trips to Grand Rapids, with much of the way during one of those trips being in near-constant white-out conditions; one trip to Bay City; two funerals, which were emotionally draining; and a low-level sickness of some sort almost the entire time.

BUT, it’s my birthday today so I’ll do what I want to.

And I wanted to paint.

Back in October, before the kitchen renovation project got underway, I started a new painting.

I got this far.

And then I screwed up. I had to paint over my mistake and wait a couple weeks for the paint to dry so I could continue. Then the holidays happened.

Today I dove back in head first. I added the waterfall I had previously botched.

And when that seemed to go well, I added everything else.

I’m really happy with the results. The subject is Manido Falls, which you may remember from this post about the tail end of my epic Upper Peninsula road trip this past June.

It’s not an exact representation but an interpretation. I’m trying to break myself of attempting to recreate photos and instead consider a painting on its own terms. In this case that meant added red tones to the rocks that weren’t that strong in the original photo in order to complement the greens of the trees.

Once this is dry I will list it in my Etsy store, Erin’s Artful Life.

A Changing Landscape and a Hidden Waterfall

Posted on July 14, 2017July 14, 2017 by Erin Bartels

On a Sunday morning in early June, my son and I left Munising after breakfast at Bay Furnace Bagel to head to parts west.

It was tremendously foggy and cool for the first fifty miles between Munising and Marquette, but not so foggy I didn’t realize how lovely it would be to live on Lake Superior near the town of Au Train.

The fog lifted and I pulled over for a few shots of Superior.

It is a road trip, after all, and the scenery along the way is half the point.

Around Marquette and beyond, the landscape of the Upper Peninsula begins to change from dairy farms and scrubby wetlands to hills with imposing outcroppings of rock, reminiscent of the foothills of a mountain range.

This is copper country and iron country. And indeed it is part of an ancient mountain range, the Porcupine Mountains, which we’ll get to by and by.

There’s no where else in the state of Michigan quite like it. It reminded me at times of the drive from flat Denver to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Except everywhere there is water. Rivers, creeks, wetlands, waterfalls, a Great Lake, and inland lakes.

One can spend too long in a car, especially when one is nine years old.

Time for a short hike along the storied Sturgeon River to find a waterfall…

The boy has discovered that he loves climbing and leaping around on rocks. Finding such things to climb and leap on was his singular focus in the western UP.

He’s also found that he loves rushing rivers and rapids, the sounds of which we normally don’t hear in the flat, lazy middle of the Mitten where rivers take their time over riverbeds of muffling sediment.

It’s possible he may have gotten tired of my continual admonishments to “be careful” on the sometimes slippery rocks.

We found Canyon Falls at the end of about a 1/2 mile trail. I allowed the boy to come around the fence and down a bit into the gorge for a closer look at these falls, which are tucked away below the trail.

But I didn’t let him get quite as far down as I went to get the best view inside the little “canyon” where they empty out.

After all, one has to have some sense of limits. Even when it is clear that one’s son is busy testing his.

In case you’re wondering where to find these falls, you’ll want to head toward the red star off Highway 41, seven miles south of L’Anse.

My Second Oil Painting: A Sepia-Toned Waterfall

Posted on January 8, 2017January 8, 2017 by Erin Bartels

This evening I executed my second oil painting.

I’m largely happy with it, though next time I do a shape with contact paper I will get some that is a bit stronger as a few little gaps let out some paint and I had to take it off the canvas as best I could with paint thinner. And once I’m at the stage where I think I’m getting good enough to give anything away, I’ll have to get some professional grade canvases because, as you can see, this one was not stretched tight enough.

For this painting I followed one of Bob Ross’s videos, one I got on DVD for my birthday. It started with contact paper and black gesso (which is an acrylic paint and allowed to dry completely.

Next you cover the whole canvas with a very thin coat of liquid clear, followed up by a thin coat of a brown color created from equal parts alizarin crimson and sap green.

And after this point I totally forgot to stop between each stage to take pictures! But you start from what is in the very background in your mind and work forward, each layer of tree shapes getting darker and darker as they get closer to you. Add the waterfall, a cliff face, and water at the bottom, plus some highlights and water lines and you’re nearly done.

Then you get to take that ugly contact paper off.

I definitely made some mistakes in this one, and it’s harder than it looks when Bob does it to make tree trunks and branches that look decent (more practice with the liner brush is needed). But it’s also a lot easier than you think it will be, especially if you already have some experience with a brush.

I hope to do a new painting every Sunday, so you’re likely to see more of these soon. I hope you like seeing them, and seriously, it’s less complicated than you think. If you can make the investment (getting started can be pricey) you can absolutely have some fun painting in oils.