Denny Karchner

This is bronze artist extraordinaire, Don Hershberger. Don is 55 years old when I painted him in 2008. He lives in nearby, Clark, Wyoming. Don has lived the lived of a cowboy here in Wyoming for many, many years but he has always found the time to create. His bronze work consists of cowboys, horses, Native Americans and wild animals from the area. One other interesting fact about Don is that he is a cowboy preacher. Here is day one. I posed Don on his ranch in Clark. He is holding his favorite lasso, leaning against his classic buck rail fence. The piece is traditional oils on Ampersand, Gessobord Masonite. The overall size is 18" x 24". Here is a close-up of his face. Here is day two's work. The hand and shirt are still pretty rough. These are two items that I have to let set up over night then work all the detail on top the next day. I spent most of the day detailing Don's shirt and hand and I am still not quite done. There is still quite a bit of detailing to do once the paint dries more, stitches, highlights and so on. Day four…

This is my good friend, Gordon Bond of Land Of Lakes, Florida. Shiloh Jasper Green as he calls himself, is a member of S.A.S.S aka the Single Action Shooting Society that is a national group who are quick draw artists and shooting competitors. Here is day one. This is a 16" x 20" portrait with the background roughed in. I am painting with traditional oils. This painting is on museum-grade Masonite made by Ampersand. It has a white, textured clay surface and covered with white gesso. Here is day two. I had managed to get Gordon's face all roughed in. Here is a close up of Gordon's face after smoothing his facial tones with a dry brush. My wife Leigh took the reference photograph that I used to paint from. If you closely at Gordon's right eye, you will clearly see the beautiful orange sunset, trees and sky reflected there. Day three. I have roughed in the base coat for Gordon's bandana and metal star concho. Here is day four. You can see that I have painted in my basecoat for the shirt and vest. Day five. I laid down what are the heavy shadow areas of the shirt and…

OK children, gather around, it's time for a history lesson! As you look out our front window here on the Lower South Fork of the Shoshone River, which faces southwest, you see the famous landmark, called Castle Rock about three miles away. It juts up from the valley floor and stands all by itself. It rises several hundred above the floor of the valley. Castle Rock actually climbs to 6,010 feet above sea level. Here at the ranch we are about 5300 feet above sea level to give you an idea how high it is. As the Castle Rock sign says: "John Colter, famed among the famous breed of Mountain Men, passed this landmark late in the fall of 1807 while on business for the fur trader Manual Lisa. Searching for Indians in order to conduct trade, he also hunted salt caves reputedly located near the headwaters of this stream then known as the stinking water." On his journey, Colter not only discovered this later named Shoshone River but he also became the first recorded white man to visit the upper Wind River, Jackson's Hole and Yellowstone Park. His lonely trek, compounding the normal dangers of savage wilderness by mid…

This is someone else who quickly became a good friend that I met early in 2008. His name is Gene Hartung. Gene lives right across the Buffalo Bill Dam from us in Cody, Wyoming. My wife, Leigh ran into him in downtown Cody. Leigh knows exactly the kind of faces I am constantly on the lookout for. She immediately asked him if he would pose for me. He told her how my mentor, James Bama, had asked him that very same question several years earlier. Gene agreed to pose for Bama, but what a shame that Bama never painted him! His loss was my gain. During a driving snow storm in 2008, we did my photo shoot at his log home. I actually posed him in the exact same clothes Bama did, except for a different shirt. Gene had a favorite saddle as a young cowboy. It had completely worn out and was long gone by then. Since the Bama shoot, Gene had taken up saddle making. He wanted to make an exact copy of his own saddle, and that he set out to do. He had never made a saddle before. Working totally from memory, he actually made four…