The Sleeping Indian above Jackson Hole, drawn in the short evening window when sagebrush stops pretending to be grey.
Notes
The one everybody sees and nobody climbs
This piece is about a mountain that lives in the visual shadow of better-publicized mountains, which is unfair but also useful. Sheep Mountain sits above the National Elk Refuge on the east side of Jackson Hole and spends most of its life being looked past toward the Tetons, despite being the one ridge in town that can turn completely improbable in evening light.
The informal name, Sleeping Indian, comes from the profile seen from the valley floor. The official name is Sheep Mountain, for the bighorns, and the tension between those names has been around for years. The more dramatic fact is what came off it: in 1925 the north flank failed in the Gros Ventre Slide, damming the river and creating Lower Slide Lake; in 1927 that natural dam failed and destroyed most of Kelly. The scar is still there, which is more than can be said for most historical signage.
What interested me visually was the color lie sagebrush country tells at noon. From the road it reads as subdued, dusty, sensible. Then the light drops and the hillside goes purple, magenta, brick red, and other colors you would be accused of inventing if you were imprudent enough to paint them honestly.
So I painted them honestly. Eight flat colors, which is already me showing questionable restraint. The speckling on the slope is thousands of small shapes standing in for plants because flat vector cannot fake that kind of texture any other way. Tedious, yes. Also the whole point.
