Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Safety First





I painted this morning in a blazing lightning storm. I know, I failed my plein air safety class. But it was just far enough away I felt safe. Just don't tell my wife, she will take my brushes away. There is something about having a good one going you just don't want to stop. However, I watched Kenn Bachaus try to run from a Grizzly bear on a video in which he and Matt Smith and Jean LaGassick painted in Denali. A bear meandered up and Matt and Jean booked. Kenn however tried to pick up and carry his French easel painting and all. My daughter said,"man, he must have had a good one on." I have never done a painting good enough that would slow, impede or hinder my retreat from a bear. I just don't paint that good. I bet if that bear would have charged him though he would have gotten a face full of French easel.
I also was going to do a little demo for the blog by taking pictures as I went. I got the first one and the last one. I have to say when the lightning got cracking I starting painting with a bit more speed and focus and forgot to take pictures. I also took a picture of the storm. It was beautiful. It started small in front of me and just exploded as it went by. I noticed as I went back to Leiper's Fork it had blown down quite a few trees as it passed through.
Also, don't forget the Harding Show is tomorrow night through Saturday afternoon. Come by and say hi!

4 comments:

René PleinAir said...

Hehehe you never saw the Adventures in Plein air paintings from
Jeremy Lipking I guess.

A good effort though, very nice!

Thanks for posting.

Unknown said...

I guess if you had a Smith and Wesson 500 in your French Easel, you could stand down a grizzly. Not that I'd want to try.

Kevin Menck said...

Rene,I honestly don't believe my lightning storm got as close as Lipking's. A couple of those strikes sounded right over them.
Jeremy,I read Lewis and Clark's journals and they were shooting bears with 50. calibers muzzleloaders and they said it would just make them mad. Anything less than an RPG and I'm running.

Keith Tilley said...

And to think that, when we first go plein air painting, what scares us most is people looking over our shoulders!