In 2023, I challenged myself to paint at least one scene from each of the 63 US National Parks. I started in February, with a mini gouache of Big Bend as a sort of proof of concept, then began working my way down an alphabetical list. I finally finished with Zion in late November. You can find them all on my National Park Collection page (I’ve also included several in this post!)
This was a great opportunity to learn – not only about technique and about the parks themselves, but about my own preferences as an artist. Here’s what I discovered.
Inspiration should always take precedence over challenges.
On days when I wanted to paint but didn’t have an idea, the challenge was great. I had a list of parks and I mostly worked through it in alphabetical order. This meant that I didn’t have to think about what to do next: I’d find the next park on the list and paint.
On days when I was inspired to do something else, the challenge felt like a burden. When I found myself thinking “Let me just get through this challenge so I can do something else,” I had to remind myself that the deadline was arbitrary and that if I was feeling that I wanted to do something else, I should just do it!
Challenges are great to stimulate creativity when you’ve got no ideas, but they shouldn’t stifle inspiration. If I’m called to paint something else, I should chase that feeling in the moment, not wait until I’m between challenges. The challenge will be there.
I don’t like painting the same thing twice.
This is something I’ve learned before, mostly when painting to Kolbie Blume challenges, but it bears repeating. Of course I always find problems and things I could have done better in any painting, but if I follow up an initial painting with a second painting from the same reference – an immediate attempt to do better – it doesn’t feel good the second time around. I feel neurotic and perfectionist, instead of curious and interested.
A nice thing about a long-haul slog like this is that it discouraged perfectionism and preciousness about any one painting because I knew I’d never get through them all if I didn’t say “good enough” and move on.
Flexibility is key.
If I’d had a more strict set of “rules” for my challenge, it would have been a lot harder. It was great to have the flexibility to switch things up within the general “nationals parks” idea.
One important piece of flexibility was switching between gouache and watercolor. While I initially envisioned this as a gouache-only challenge, some images began to call out for watercolor.
While I often stuck to pretty classic scenes of each park, flexibility in reference photos allowed me to showcase views that were outside the obvious.
I used quite a variety of paper sizes and formats throughout the challenge as I continued to experiment with supplies. Generally, my paintings got larger. My first few pieces were on 4×6 postcard-sized paper, while my last few paintings were over double the size on 7×10.
I even varied style a bit. While most of the pieces are in loose landscape style, some are more abstract.
The flexibility allowed me to balance creativity and constraint, and to look for opportunities to shake things up.
I wish I’d shared credited references.
While a handful of my paintings were done from photographers I follow on Instagram (and the direct link to the post is identified in the image caption), for the most part, I used stock photography or uncredited photography on travel websites. Early in the project, I relied heavily on the post “The Most Beautiful Images We Could Find of Every U.S. National Park” from Conde Nast Traveler. (Interestingly, many of the photos I used have since been replaced on that page.)
It was kind of an awkward position; somehow it felt more comfortable to me to paint from these sources than to share them. But this meant I ended up sharing no reference photos, which led people to think that I had painted from life or my imagination, when in reality I’d had quite a bit of influence from a photographer’s composition.
As this year’s uproar about AI art has amply demonstrated, the wide availability of these photos on the Internet doesn’t mean they’re public domain or that they sprang out of the earth fully formed. All photographs have a photographer, and when I paint from a reference – especially if I stick pretty close to the original composition – I am benefiting from another artist’s ideas. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that kind of artistic indebtedness – I think it’s a cornerstone of art – but I do think that the original artist should be acknowledged and credited.
In future I want to try to stick to photographs with a known photographer, ideally with a public domain license (e.g. Unsplash), where I’m able to give credit.
I prefer watercolor to gouache.
I had dreamed of this challenge as a way to learn gouache by doing those WPA-style posters.
But I quickly began allowing myself to paint in watercolor occasionally because I preferred it, especially for scenes with soft clouds, translucent water, or gentle color shifts that I felt would work better in watercolor.
Soon, I was painting all scenes in watercolor by default, switching to gouache only when I felt that the scene already had a strongly posterized appearance, or there was some element that called for gouache (e.g. light-over-dark, as in wildflower fields).
At the beginning of the year, I was new enough to gouache not to know which one I’d ultimately prefer, but I think I can now state with confidence that I simply subjectively enjoy watercolor more. Still, it’s nice to have gouache as an option for certain types of scenes or just for a change.
I like variety.
The wide variety of different types of landscapes found in American National Parks was definitely an aspect of this challenge that appealed to me. I especially liked it when alphabetically adjacent parks were extremely geographically different. I liked following up desert with mountain, mountain with ocean.
One of my favorite things about this collection is how, taken together, it showcases a wide variety of types of landscapes, colors palettes, times of day, shapes and forms, moods, etc.
I don’t like man-made environments.
I found that I avoided adding any evidence of human activity (such as monuments, buildings, and people). I rarely even paint animals. I’m in it for the sky and earth, sea and trees, rocks and grass.
I’d say that pretty much the only park that I absolutely did not want to paint and just gritted my teeth through it so that I could be done was Gateway Arch, because it was the only park where I felt I had to paint a monument in order to make the park recognizable. You can tell it’s one I didn’t want to do because it looks very phoned-in.
I can’t stand caves.
Of the three cave-centric US National Parks (Carlsbad Caverns, Mammoth Cave, and Wind Cave), I painted a cave interior for only one of them. I wasn’t dreading Carlsbad – I expected the challenge of painting a cave interior to be interesting – but in practice I found it a bit of a chore. Caves make me feel claustrophobic, even in photographs.
I wasn’t particularly happy with the way Carslbad came out (not least because I also felt that I needed to include a little man in order to convey a sense of scale), and more importantly, I didn’t enjoy painting it. So when the next cave came up, I painted the cave mouth.
By the time Wind Cave rolled around near the end of the challenge, I simply painted a different view of the park: the grassland and big skies called to me. (I do wish I’d painted the wind, though.)
I love skies.
Skies are my favorite! The photos I’m drawn to feature a wide variety of different types of skies, from fluffy clouds, to moody overcast skies, to night skies and auroras.
Sometimes I barely painted anything park-centric at all: my painting of Indiana Dunes is basically a sunset with a bit of sand hastily added to the bottom.
I love deserts and mountains.
I live in a city, in land that wants to be forest. Most of the natural areas I’m able to visit on a regular basis is very tree-filled. So it was a surprise to me that I felt so-so about painting forests, and much more enjoyed painted landscapes that were more unfamiliar to me: deserts and mountains. Perhaps I’m drawn to these environments because they’re unfamiliar, but I also think there is just something inherently beautiful about rock formations. Besides, these environments lend themselves well to big skies!
I’m drawn to grand, expansive landscapes.
Probably the reason I wanted to paint parks in the first place is probably because of the sense of grandeur and expansiveness present in many of these majestic and large landscapes. That also explains why I love skies (and hate caves).
The project allowed me to “travel” with my brush.
As a chronically ill public servant, I don’t have the budget, time off, or physical capability to visit many of these landscapes. Painting is a way for me to enjoy and revel in these images without actually hiking there.
This was a great way to learn the parks!
I learned about the existence of several parks I otherwise would not have heard of, or about which I previously knew very little.
Another thing I would do, if I did this project again, is to include more information about the parks in my captions, because although some of them are quite famous, others were obscure and interesting to learn about.
What’s next?
Who knows…. Canada maybe?