Week 22: Capulin Volcano Residency Complete

Back on the road!

Hi, friends! Before I dive into the weekly recap, I wanted to extend a BIG welcome to all of the new subscribers — I’m so glad you’re here!

I usually try to post on Sundays, but that all went out the window when I came down with the worst case of Covid I’ve had yet. All I could do was sleep. I’m happy to report that I’m feeling better today, Tuesday. Hopefully I continue on the mend.

The dreaded double line! It’s no fun being sick — especially when you live in a van!

I finished my time as an artist in residence at Capulin Volcano National Monument on Saturday, November 2nd and I wanted to catch you up on my last week there. I’m feeling so thankful that I got to stay in this special place for a whole month. You can bet that I’ll be back someday!

Now onto recap:

Paintings I Donated to Capulin Volcano National Monument

As part of my residency I was required to donate a painted to the park about “what Capulin Volcano means to me”. I couldn’t narrow it down to just one subject since so many amazing things happened while I was there.

The three paintings I donated to Capulin Volcano National Monument for my residency, in Geoff Goins’ office.

Here they are, in the order that I painted them:

The Pleiades Rising

The first thing that I HAD to paint was the aurora that I was lucky enough to see on October 12th, with Pleiades rising up over the volcano.

I wish that I could take a photo of my painting WITH the aurora, but the volcano will have to do:

Here’s one of my aurora photos that I used for a reference:

I painted that background sooooooo many times until I could get it just how I wanted it. (And yeah, Jason rescued a bunch of backgrounds from the trash! I knew I should have ripped them up like Georgia O’ Keeffe!)

In case you were wondering, I used quinacridone rose, quinacridone coral and indanthrone blue for the background, and sumi ink for the silhouette.

I painted each star individually — it took a long time but I didn’t want to splatter paint and have random patterns. I used a combination of white gouache, Chinese white watercolor, and a Posca extra fine paint pen. It was really meditative and relaxing.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

I was lucky enough to see Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS so many times during my residency, so of course I had to paint it too!

Capulin Volcano was named a Gold Tier Dark Sky Park by the International Dark Sky Association in 2016 and I thought that the park could use this artwork for dark sky events so I kept it really simple.

This one has a mix of ultramarine blue and indanthrone blue for the background, sumi ink for the trees and the same technique as the aurora for the stars.

Prairie Grasses and the Volcano

The third and final painting was a labor of love — and I love how it turned out! It’s the view of Capulin Volcano from the Boca trail, with larger-than-life prairie grasses coming up out of the top.

Capulin and the surrounding Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field are surrounded by so much prairie — it made my heart sing! So I had to try and capture that somehow.

The Boca trail has the post prairie of any trail on the park, so after going there and doing several sketches I came up with the idea of making the prairie grasses larger than life.

From left to right, that’s big bluestem, sideoats grama, buffalograss, little bluestem, blue grama and Indiangrass.

Let’s hear it for prairie!

One Painting Just for Fun

This one turned into a happy accident — I dropped my brush while painting the sky and just decided to go with it:

I love how it turned out and I’m going to keep it as a momento of my time there.

Prickly Poppy Painting

I did two prickly poppy paintings to give to the rangers to thank them for all their help during my residency. This was my first time trying the new Kakimori nib from Japan and it was so fun to use — it glided across the paper and held a ton of ink.

It’s of a prickly poppy that was growing in the Visitor Center parking lot. I love prickly poppies — the contrast between the delicate petals and the prickly blue-gray leaves is just so pretty.

As you can probably tell I had a ton of fun with the background on this one — the darker patches are some soil I sprinkled in the wet wash. Fun!

Sunrise on Top of the Volcano

On Friday November 1st — my last full day at Capulin — Ranger Nico took Jason and I up to the top to watch the sunrise. It was an amazing and unforgettable experience.

It was super cold, too!

We got to watch the shadow of Capulin Volcano slowly make its way to the horizon — so cool! (Check out this post from when we watched the shadow at sunset).

Three cold but happy amigos! From left to right: Ranger Nico, me, and Jason.

Just wow!

Amazing Sunsets

Speaking of wow, I had to leave you with a few more amazing sunset photos. These were taken from right down road where I was staying during my residency at Capulin Volcano — I’m already missing our ritual of watching the sun dip below the horizon to mark the end of the day.

If you haven’t been to Capulin Volcano yet I highly recommend it as a stop when you’re in the neighborhood. Such a small but mighty park.

Have Any Questions for Me?

If you have any questions for me about my artist residencies at Capulin Volcano or Valles Caldera I’d love to hear! I’m working on a longer post about Capulin Volcano — stay tuned.

The post office where we mailed in our ballots in New Mexico.

It feels weird to be writing this in Colorado Springs, Colorado and trying not to watch the election results come in too closely. My stomach feels tight — and not just from Covid. All we can do now is wait.

See you next week, when we’ll hopefully be recovered — and in Denver, Colorado! — Lisa & Jason