Joshua Tree National Park

 

Sheesh! I haven't been over to nearby Joshua Tree National Park for a long time. It IS one of my inspirational places to go for doing paintings, after all. (Of course, the Covid-19 shutdowns didn't help).

So I went there today! Weather was pleasant-to-warm, no high winds and I was in the mood. Besides, I needed some fresh material for paintings, and it's just good to go there once in a while!

Had to do some hiking and a little climbing for the picture of the red barrel cactus -- but I think it was worth it!

Oh -- and I saw a couple of lizards, too. This one is a female side-blotched lizard. (The other was a horned lizard, but I couldn't get a clear shot of that little guy).

Cute, huh?

I had hoped to make it to some other spots, but sunset came all too quickly, so -- another time. Soon. Before the oven heat begins. Such is life in the desert!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Springtime in the Mojave Desert

Springtime comes a little later in the high desert than it does in lower elevations. We're at about 3,000 ft. / 915m, so if you made several trips March - May from the lower desert (where, in some places, the elevation is near sea level) to the Mojave, you would see a progression of flowers working their way up. Except you'd also see different kinds of flowers!

Today for Cinco de Mayo, I took a fast trip through the higher areas of Joshua Tree National Park. I wish the sky would have stayed clear and blue, but sometimes, nature has its own schedule.

Still, the picture-taking was worth it. Sometimes, all I really need are visual notes on what is blooming and where. In some cases, I'll shoot details I might need to paint leaves and flowers up close -- then, the overcast skies can actually be helpful in lowering the contrast of the photos. And I have at least a gazillion or two photos of the Park with the lighting I prefer, but today's pictures add information that I may not already have!

These are a few of the 75 or so photographs I took today:

Inside the west entrance to the Park

Desert mallow in Lost Horse Valley

Near Keys View

Side-blotched lizard

Horned lizard

Horned lizard, same specimen as above

Parry nolina

View into Twentynine Palms

Near Twentynine Palms

I had a good time in the Park, but I simply MUST get me a walking stick -- probably a bamboo rod with rubber caps on each end. Unless I'm hiking on a mostly flat trail without lots of little ups and downs and having to step over things, my ancient knees tend to give out, and down I go!! This time I got a little more scraped up than usual, and I have a swollen area on one of my shins. NO MORE!! Walking stick, or give up hiking!!

Anyway, I hope your Cinco de Mayo was fun. Overall, mine was!

www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

 

Finished a New BIG Painting...FINALLY!!

I FINALLY finished a painting that's been bogging me down for months! Not because it was all that complex, but because I just couldn't seem to force myself to work on it. I guess larger paintings intimidate me a bit...more than they used to. And I never really liked working on big stuff anyway.

 

Mt. San Jacinto from Morongo Valley      60" x 48"

The scene shows Mt. San Jacinto (west of Palm Springs, CA) as one sees it from the northern end of Morongo Valley. The piece features many of the plants and animals that live in this small rural community. (OK, you're not likely to see white doves there, but there's a reason why I included them).

Here are the animals that appear in the painting. Some are easy to find, others require more searching:

Animals of Morongo Valley

This is obviously not a complete pictorial of every critter that inhabits this area. But these are examples of animals that live there.

Now, the white doves... This painting is being donated to a church (Church of the Lighted Cross) in Morongo Valley. White doves often symbolize the Holy Spirit, so it seemed appropriate to include a small flock of them.

Also, I normally would have painted this artwork in a horizontal ("landscape") format rather than vertical ("portrait"), but it needed to fit in a particular space. So vertical it is!

I hope the painting will be a blessing to the people of the church, the population of Morongo Valley and -- perhaps -- to the entire world!

 

Another Lizard

Another lizard painting, that is.

This seems to be a popular lizard around here. At the Open Studio tours two weeks ago, I displayed my first version of this little guy (or girl -- not sure which). Since then, I've made two other versions of that piece, making slight changes to the images, mostly by curving the tail.

By request, then, I painted this!

More Desert Reptiles

Well, good grief! I'm falling behind in blog entries, aren't I?

That's partly because I started a second blog. It appears on a Website for The Desert Sun, a Palm Springs-based newspaper.

I'm limiting the subject matter and images to "the beauty and mystery of the deserts." I've posted a combination of photos I've taken and paintings I've made. Most of the other blogs at the newspaper are political in nature, and I wanted something that might, hopefully, make the residents of the desert glad they live there.

In the meantime, today the weather in the desert was a little cooler, so I thought I'd go hiking and try to get more pictures of lizards that I can use in paintings. As it turned out, I saw numerous examples of only one species. Oh, well. Maybe another time.

I'm not 100% positive, but I believe this is one of a number of whiptail lizards that live in the desert. This good-lookin' fella (or gal) is partly obscured by vegetation, but the pic shows how long the tail is -- that'll be good to know for the paintings!

Lizards x 2

I've now done two paintings of this lizard. The first one (on the left) has all of the attention to detail, transparent glazes and all of those things that makes a painting really neat (IMO, anyway).

The painting on the right I produced with a particular customer in mind. She likes the first painting but can't afford what I need to ask for it. So I painted the second piece as what I call an "eBay painting": no glazes -- direct painting only; not as much stuff; and not a straight copy of any other piece I've done. It took about 1/3 as long to create as the first painting, and the varnishing process will also be greatly simplified: a total of two layers of varnish as opposed to seven for painting #1.

If it turns out the customer doesn't buy it, I'll offer it on eBay. And if it doesn't sell there, I'll have it available for an open-studio tour I'll be participating in this coming October.

Good thing I like lizards, huh? (But don't ask me to paint spiders. I can't stand those!)

Lizard of Ahhhs...

Handsome little critter, huh? (Or pretty little critter -- I don't know if this is a male or a female).

This desert spiny lizard showed up in a corner of our patio yesterday. So of course, I just had to take some pictures of him/her.

Need I say s/he will be showing up in a painting in the near future?

Side-Blotched Lizard

Cute little guy, huh? This one was about 6"/15cm long, nose to tip of tail.

These are quite common in the desert. They breed throughout the year and can lay up to six clutches of eggs a year, with 2-6 eggs in each clutch. It's good that they're so prolific -- the desert has lots of critters that like to eat them!

Side-blotched lizards are rather colorful, but one has to get fairly close to see the colors. It, of course, is up to the individual lizard if you will get close enough to study him/her. But when you can, these reptiles seem to exhibit all the colors of the Southwest -- which happen to be my favorite set of colors.

And now I have some of the best photos I've been able to get of this species. Expect a painted portrait of this little friend sometime in the future.

A Desert Lizard

I made a quick trip to Joshua Tree National Park today for some inspiration and to see how the fall-flowering shrubs were doing. I didn't see as many flowers as I would have liked, but there were some. Perhaps I can post some pix of scenes that inspire me beyond belief to paint.

But first, I must share a picture I took of a lizard. I think I saw more lizards than flowers. Cute little guy, isn't he? Or she? I don't know how to tell males and females apart. I'm sure, however, they can tell; otherwise, we would soon run out of lizards! Regardless, I expect this little lizard (about 6"/15cm nose to tip-of-tail) to appear in some paintings someday.

I'm not sure of the species, but I believe this is one example of a side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana). The coloring varies somewhat, and this one appears to be banded rather than blotched. But you know--even lizards gotta do it "their way"!

More desert pix to follow.