I have wanted to do a larger painting of Lone Peak for quite a while. It’s the biggest and most prominent mountain that I see from the part of the Salt Lake Valley where I live. I periodically post images of my view on Instagram. You can see the vast differences in weather, light, and colors.
I did a little painting of Lone Peak at last year’s Art in the Barn, as it was viewed from the spot at Draper City Park where my booth was. When looking for photos of Lone Peak, there are many that are taken from the cirque; which is the little valley just below the summit on the east side of the mountain. When people are hiking to the summit, that’s the route that’s taken. I haven’t made it to the summit yet, so I didn’t want to post a photo of that view.
The cross country team my kids run with does weekly trail runs from different trails throughout the south Salt Lake Valley and one park in particular, Steep Mountain Park, has one of my favorite views of Lone Peak. So that’s the view I went with.
I usually have a plan in my head on how I will do any of my paintings… whether it’s a starry sky and what colors it will feature, or a clear day with clouds. With this one, I literally had NO idea what I wanted to do with the sky. I started with a basic blue sky wash and then went in with some toilet paper to lift out some clouds. The AC was on in my house and my wash was drying really fast, so that plan kinda went out the window.
Once I had that first wash done and dry, I decided to come back to it after finishing what I wanted to do with the mountain.
I thoroughly loved playing with the purples and teals in the shadows and figuring out what kind of colors made the sheet granite cliffs that adore the top of Lone Peak. My youngest son watched me for a little while and I was SO PROUD when he noticed the differences in the warmer, yellow-y greens of trees in the sun and the cool, bluer greens of trees in the shade.
When the mountain was all done, I did another wash of my sky blue to make it all darker and then I busted out my Himi gouache paints to figure out some clouds.
My first pass was an attempt to do wispy clouds and I ditched that idea pretty quickly. I don’t have enough experience with gouache to try and make it wispy like I could do with oil paints.
Instead I focused on making them fluffy and tried to give them some dimension and scale. I really like how they turned out.
And then the washi tape I was using to hold the paper down tore off a little bit of the sky!! I was so mad! At least that is easily fixed after I scan the painting and open it in Photoshop.
I am working on a way to have this painting done as a trucker hat for the running club my kids are on and eventually, I will have this available as a giclee print. So stay tuned.
Supplies: (a few are affiliate links)
You can watch a time lapse video of the process here: