I usually started a painting by toning a  stretched canvas of Belgian linen that was primed with white gesso.  Unless you are snow-blind in the Arctic at high noon, stark white is an unnatural color  so a more "natural" tone is best for me.  I use a wash of burnt umber diluted in turpentine.  After I smeared it all over the canvas,  I buffed it with a cloth to remove the excess stain leaving an even base.  It sounds weird, but the toned canvas works magic for me and allows me to see the images on the canvas in my mind before I make a single mark.   

I sketched the initial cartoon with a small brush using the toning wash.  I create the vertical balance and focal point mainly thru intuition as I draw.  I try to guide the viewers eye on a path of discovery.  I sometimes use what I call, "the 3/5 theory."  That means I want the natural focal point to be roughly 3/5 from ether side and 3/5 from the top or bottom of  the canvas.  I want the direction of movement to travel toward open space.  Within that rule, I create the composition as I envision it directly on the canvas.  You can see where I changed my mind and raised the edge of the hill.   Often I refer to pencil sketches of details and composition I worked  out earlier on a large sketchpad.  Usually it is easy; but, if I don't have a clear vision, it can be a battle.  I imagine the painting composition as if I were standing in the actual scene and looking out at the viewer.  Having said that, I confess that people who have watched me paint also know that, at times, I just start painting without any composition or cartoon at all.  I first have to see it completed in my mind's eye - then it's just a matter of putting the right color in the right place - the process I enjoy the most.  It is very satisfying to see an image take on life from my mind to the canvas.  The cartoon reflects my initial concept of the painting.  I am not legally bound to any constraints unless they still work for me.  I have modified many compositions halfway through the process.

I let the sketch rest for an hour or so before I apply any color.  I guess it's like sitting on the starting line  and revving my engine.  When I actually start laying paint on the canvas, it goes pretty fast. I sometimes work long hours and always concentrate on the image in front of me and how it fits into the scene so it's easy to lose myself in the work.   I often ate meals at the easel - being careful not to dip my brush into my coffee, iced tea, or Cap'n coke .   I speak from experience.

This first step sets the stage for the duration of the work.  I apply a mood color I know will be in the clouds or sky and I do it aggressively.  The routine puts me in command of the paint and not vice-versa.  I can see the image before I paint it, so I have the advantage over a reliance on "guess and take a chance."  My mind has already done the work; my arm is just trying to catch up.  Again, if something is out of kilter, it will cry to me.  If I ignore it, it will eventually cause me grief - even if no one else notices. 

For my purposes, it is best to apply color starting from top to bottom and from distance to foreground.  A lot of my work is wet on wet and that helps to keep things clean and sharp.  I guess that is evident  by these photos. I rough in some of the image I wish to have and complete it as I go forward - right up until the end.  I jump around the canvas in what you might think is an inconsistency, but I prefer to think it is driven by my excitement and an unplanned - still but real - strategy.  That's my reasoning and I'm sticking to it.  My easel is on casters so I use my toe to push it away for normal viewing  and pull it back to continue painting.  \

There were a lot of important players in this historic drama.  At this point, I go right to Chief Joseph because he is the main figure of all the principal characters.  His countenance is well known by most folks and he will be examined more closely.  All the likenesses are important but  that of Joseph is the most important.

Next, I did some detail in the background encampment and then started with the military figures.  Those men are,  Left to Right from Joseph:  Colonel Nelson Miles, General Oliver Howard, the interpreter Arthur Chapman, Colonel Miles' Aide Lieutenant Edward McClernand, and General Howard's Aide and reporter, Lieutenant C. E. S.  Wood.    There were several other officers that were present but "out of  the picture" in  this painting.  I posed for Joseph's right arm to make sure how the shirt draped.  You can see the Polaroid clipped to the easel.  I used myself and my family as models several times in my career.  We were  not the best models, but we were usually available and we worked cheap.

I work from the data and intelligence I researched along with my instincts about human nature, remembering that I  am creating an imagined but symbolic work of art - not a flawless time-capsule.  Had there been cameras and sound recorders (or cell phones) present at that event, painting it might have been a moot point.  Even so, you cannot write your own script or make things up like it's a Hollywood movie.  I do not subscribe to the notion that, "If this is not how history was, it's how it should have been."  The plain truth is usually more beautiful or emotional than a fantasy - because it embraces a reality that we can recognize.   Trying to capture the truth requires research and respect for the subjects in ways that fantasy can ignore.  It also involves a bit of guesswork based on a knowledge of human nature and the raw facts.  That's why it's an "art" and not a "science."

At the end of the siege, five Nez Perce' men accompanied Joseph as he rode up to the low plateau to surrender.  He rode a black horse  and carried his Winchester Model 1866 rifle, commonly known as a "Yellow Boy" because of its solid brass receiver.  The actual surrender rifle has been on display at the Upper Missouri Breaks Interpretative Center museum in Fort Benton. Montana. The hunting rifle Joseph used after the war belongs to the Nez Perce' Tribe.  A similar rifle that was not Joseph's but was used in the war is in the Smithsonian.  Yet another similar Model 1866 owned and used by the warrior Yellow Wolf is on display at the Big Hole National Battlefield near Wisdom, Montana. In 1877, a model 1866 Winchester rifle would cost around $40.00.  Today it would be over $1400.00.

There was little if anything to burn for fuel except dry willows.  There was hardly anything to eat.  The people suffered from physical and emotional exhaustion, thirst, and hunger with many wounded among them.  Exposing one's self by leaving the lodges to get willow fuel or water was perilous.  The young War Chief Looking Glass had been killed in a hastily dug rifle-pit on the bluff to the north of the camp.  Chief Toohoolhoolzote was killed at the end of September.  They had lost other Chiefs, warriors, and family members during the 1700 mile flight and the Bear Paw Battlefield.  Around 150 to 200 people, including Yellow Wolf, had gradually slipped through the lines and escaped to Canada.  The fact that those folks could escape from the siege was amazing.  While in Canada, they lived for awhile with Sitting Bull and the Lakota Sioux who had escaped capture after the Battle of Little Big Horn a few months earlier in 1876. 

It was, without doubt, a horrible ordeal for the Nez Perce'; but, it might have been much worse.  The Nez Perce' were facing a hardened experienced frontier Army, and the 5th Cavalry, 7th Cavalry, and 2nd Mounted Infantry had sufficient numbers and firepower to have charged the camp in overwhelming numbers to kill every man, woman, and child - just like Colonel Chivington had done at Sand Creek against the Arapaho and Cheyenne in 1864.   Colonel Miles had enough sense of human decency to avoid that. 

The painting is about done here; but I felt there was a little something missing to the story and I didn't know right then what it was.  You only really notice it because you sense a vague but nagging imbalance.   It is only one of my many quirks.  After starring at the canvas for hours every day, it would be easy to just move on; except I couldn't.  Resetting my eye/brain connection for a while made the difference.  I left the canvas alone for an hour or two and the solution came to me when I looked at it again.  So - I thought about the storyline and how things happened.  I thought about the danger the Nez Perce' faced and the desperation they must have felt.  They were "sitting ducks" - trapped and hunkered down.  How could I make a subtle suggestion of the danger?

The danger  became more manifest when I added some older footprints and a few spent cartridges where a soldier knelt and fired into the village.  It broke up the foreground and closed the circle.

  I signed my name. 

(I was happy and the client was happy.) 

  Post Script: The complicated history behind the painting

I've heard people call the saga of the Nez Perce' flight from Idaho, "Joseph's War."  It was not Joseph's War.  Joseph did not institute or desire a war on the people of Idaho or Oregon - or the US Army.  It was a war, but one of defense by the fleeing Nez Perce' people who were desperately defending themselves in a relentless pursuit by a white civilian militia and the US Army Cavalry.  If you were Nez Perce', you were unfairly considered to be, "an enemy of the people" in Idaho and Montana.  

Empire building thru "Manifest Destiny" requires land.  The desired land was already occupied by Native People.  There had been several instances of fraudulent and deceptive land grabs leading up to the war that were designed to steal land from the Nez Perce' Tribe and remove the Tribal Bands forever from where the Nimipu ancestors had lived for hundreds upon hundreds of years; millennia before European pioneers and settlers ever arrived in the Americas.  Added to that was the failure by the settlers from the East to respect the mutually agreed upon treaties.

The Nez Perce' war was started when a couple of hot-headed young Nez Perce' warriors, "Swan Necklace" and "Red Moccasin Tops," got drunk, decided they had had enough, and killed three white men and wounded another to avenge the mistreatment of their relatives.  After they returned from their ill-advised exploit and recounted the altercations, sixteen more young warriors set out for the settlements to extract revenge as well.  There were plenty of reasons for revenge.

Even though it was done in anger and fueled by alcohol, it was still an impetuous thing for the young warriors to do.  They did not know or understand the White-man's laws and reactions. The young warriors only knew that they were Nimipu who had their own laws and codes of conduct - this was their home.  A general panic about a "red massacre" ensued in the settler's communities.  Cultural ignorance ruled the day - for both sides - plus racism and hysteria compounded the fear of eminent massacre.  The dread of the unknown caused otherwise descent people to decend into a dark place that excused - and even promoted - such one-sided and racially-driven reprisals.   Many innocent lives from both sides were lost as a result.

Joseph (Nez Perce name: "Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt" or "Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain") was an articulate and respected leader of the band of Nimipu who lived in the Wallowa Valley of Eastern Oregon.  He was not the savage cut-throat as was characterized at the time in a Missoula newspaper.   He was one of the strongest and most well-regarded Chiefs from the many Nez Perce' bands.  The Nez Perce' were also located in Northern Idaho and spent enough time trading goods and hunting buffalo in Montana to be considered one of their  native tribes.

Joseph carried on the tradition of his father as a respected leader and orator.  You didn't get to be a Chief through any organized election process.  You became a Chief when the people respected and trusted you enough that they looked to you for leadership - they listened to you and followed you because you revealed your maturity, generosity, truthfulness, and courage.  It was informal but serious.  During the war, Chief Joseph took charge of the families and the horse herds.  The War Leader was a young warrior named "Looking Glass."  He gained the trust and respect as War Chief from the fighting warriors and planned counter-measures for some of the the evasions and battle tactics.   Major decisions effecting the tribe as a whole were decided in a Tribal Council of Chiefs and Elders.

Looking Glass was a spirited young tactician with whom the Nez Perce' orchestrated some brilliant and narrow escapes despite fighting with what the Army later described as, mostly "unserviceable weapons."  Despite his talent and courage, Looking Glass made two major missteps that sealed their fate.  The first was when he encamped on the Big Hole River in Western Montana to allow the people to rest, naively thinking that because they had left Idaho Territory, the war was behind them.  They were attacked with no warning while asleep in the very early dawn and lost many people and fighters.  They escaped with what they could salvage after their fighters fought back to gain the upper-hand, driving the Army from  the camp and  up the mountain where they were pinned down in shallow pits the soldiers dug desperately among the trees.  The warriors slowly withdrew after the people were well on their way east-southeast towards Colorado to find the Crows. They sought help from the Crow people who were their closest friends outside Idaho.  After being rebuffed, they turned back north toward Canada. 

The second and final misstep was when he encamped in North Central Montana within sight of the Bear Paw Mountains while thinking he was safely in Canada - but instead was 40 miles short of the border.  That fatal error - and the major reasons for war - were the result of cultural ignorance; neither party knew the other except for assumptions.  It was an unheard-of-idea for Native Americans that the territories of many diverse and unrelated peoples would be arbitrarily taken over by one single government that was not located anywhere near the lands that they were taking - often by disregarding mutual treaties.  Plus, they had no knowledge of those mysterious invisible lines on a piece of paper called a map that separated governments and peoples in the non-Indian world; they only knew of and defended the lands that they  lived on and hunted and whose bounds were real mountains and rivers and not arbitrary lines. In their belief, no one could "own" the land.

As the main leader among the surviving Chiefs, it became Joseph's fate to carry the burden of surrender.  That ultimately meant he had to recognize an untenable situation, quit the war, and bring an end to further death and suffering.  To say his heart was irreparably broken is an understatement.

After the surrender, Joseph was sent into exile in Oklahoma - a land he called, "the Hot Place."  He was never allowed to return to his beloved homeland in Oregon or Idaho.  The rest of the surrendered people were also sent into exile in Oklahoma as well as Kansas.  They were allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest in 1885.  By that time, their precious homeland was no longer available  to them - permanently. 

Yellow Wolf eventually returned from Canada and became the titular subject of the very valuable book, "Yellow Wolf - His Own Story," written by Lucullus V. McWhorter and published in 1940.  It is now available in paperback reprint.  It records and shares knowledge unavailable elsewhere and provides an excellent insight into the customs and beliefs of the Nimipu and the Nez Perce' War - a tragic event that should never have happened. 

Two of the many marker-stakes at the Bear Paw National Battlefield showing the exact spots where Looking Glass was killed and where the Lodge of Chief Joseph stood.  The many stakes are surrounded by symbolic stones, tokens, coins, flowers, and personal items left there by Nez Perce and other visitors in remembrance of this especially dark and final time for the Nez Perce' people.