“While sketching this magnificent vista, a rattle snake casually slid by over the edge of the canyon. About 4 metres from where I was quietly working on this drawing. It obviously hadn’t sensed me”
Grand Canyon South Rim, AZ//Pen & ink, watercolour, gouache
The sketching at the Grand Canyon could have gone on for a week. It was of a breathtaking beauty at the canyon
A rather quick pencil line drawing forms the base of these sketches. In it, Geert quickly maps out the scene, the cropping, and considers what he finds important. He then uses a fineliner or pen & ink to get the black line work down, which he might re-enforce with brushpen. After that, he washes in the watercolours, and in the sketch above, added some gouache to give the crags in the foreground a bit more substance and weight.
“As a child, playing cowboys and indians in the attic above the pub of my parents, I drew these symbols of the West. The saguaro’s in its properly named National Park were sometimes reaching heights of 4 metres”//Brushpen, watercolour
“Ironically, I threw in the towel at the Geronimo Surrender Monument! After riding from Albuquerque due South to the Mexican border, I stopped at a shelter near this monument. I had been battling crazy strong headwinds for days and when I boiled up some noodle soup and brought a spoon with the little serpentines to my mouth, the wind blew it all over my kit and legs! A car pulling a trailer stopped and I heard; Wanna Ride?”
“Indeed I did. Mollie took me to Sierra Vista, terminal town of the Western Wildlands Route”//Brushpen, watercolour
The stone pillar commemorating Geronimo’s surrender was constructed in 1934 by the Civil Works Administration, one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. The pillar is eight miles away from the actual site of Geronimo’s surrender in Skeleton Canyon, which is on private land. The plaque on the pillar uses some questionable language to describe the events it commemorates, calling Geronimo and his band “hostiles,” citing the bravery of the U.S. troops without adding context or the Apache perspective, and falsely claiming that the surrender marked the end of U.S. military warfare against native peoples. Regardless of this, the pillar does undoubtedly mark an important event in history and the life of an extraordinary person.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/
This excellent read explained the different Apache bands, their powerful chiefs, and the broken treaties and betrayal which has affected every First Nation member in this massive country
And later on when I rode through the riverlands of the North, I was in the territory of the Nez Perce and read another very tragic story