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Cartographic Perspectives, Number 99, FORTHCOMING Paint it as You Ski it – Preppernau | 1
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DOI: 10.14714/C P 99.1769
INTRODUCTION
James Niehues has painted more than 200 panoramic re-
sort maps. His 30-year body of work has changed how
mountains are represented, and is familiar to many skiers.
Charles Preppernau spoke with the artist to discuss map-
ping techniques, his new book e Man Behind the Maps,
and his new Great American Landscapes Project. Mr.
Niehues’ work can be found at jamesniehues.com.
e interview has been edited for length and clarity.
INTERVIEW
Charles Preppernau: Your maps are well-liked by both
resorts and guests. When a resort comes to you because
they’re not satised with their existing map, what sort of
things do they say they nd lacking in it?
James Neihues: e ones that don’t have a nice map—that
have used computer-generated maps—come to me be-
cause it really doesn’t show o the resort; it’s an accurate
diagram of how to get down the mountain, but it really
doesn’t show the skier where they are. If the skier looks at
that map and then looks around at their environment, they
can’t tell where they are on the map.
Whenever I do a map, if it’s a difficult mountain, and
not just one face but multiple faces, I have to do a lot of
stretching and twisting of the mountain to show all the
sides in one view. e most important thing about that,
is that whenever I nally come up with the nal composi-
tion, it has to, in my mind and the skier’s mind, have rel-
ative distances and elevations from point to point. I don’t
just take a run and stretch it across the page so I can show
the other side, I do some manipulation that will credibly
show that. It’s something that can’t be done with a com-
puter; I’m changing all sorts of perspectives and distances,
and they aren’t related in any way except how the brain
interprets them. I think that’s the important thing.
at forced perspective or “unwrapping” the slopes of
the mountain is something I’m particularly interested
Charles Preppernau (he/him)
Esri
geolographer.xyz/contactform
Paint it as You Ski it:
an Interview with Ski Resort Map Artist James Neihues
CARTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS
Alyeska
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 99, FORTHCOMING Paint it as You Ski it – Preppernau | 2
in. How do you introduce that distortion while keeping
the mountain recognizable?
If you look at a satellite map, the ski runs don’t look very
inviting. ey are very narrow because they’re very long.
You need to show it as it skis, as it exists. I don’t have a for-
mula; I reference hundreds of aerial photographs. I’ll start
at 2,000 feet above and get some full-frame perspectives
from dierent altitudes. I’ll go around the mountain and
get perspectives from dierent points of view. en I’ll
drop it lower and start picking up the detail. By the time I
get all of these together I can reference the small, detailed
photographs and relate them to the larger panoramic pho-
tos, and with that start manipulating the mountain until it
comes out.
On a blank sheet of paper I’d place all the lifts with the
links proportional like they should be or very near so.
Once I have them in place and can see the connections,
I refer to my photographs and put in all the runs in be-
tween. at’s pretty much the way that I work.
What sort of techniques have you found, when working
with light, that help the reader get a sense of the terrain,
especially where it’s not receiving direct sunlight?
If it’s not receiving direct sunlight I still put in shadows
where it’s steeper and maybe highlights, even if the sun
doesn’t touch it. Just give that lighter area to the heaves as
they come up. I also work with reected light; in the shad-
ows, I work in some reected light on the snow.
Tree shadows are important too; by the angle of the tree
shadow, you can tell if it’s steep or shallow. But there are a
lot of rises where the shadow would move so much that it
confuses people, so I don’t stay true to the shadowed ter-
rain of trees but change it enough that they can see there’s
a change in the terrain surface.
Do you incorporate atmospheric eects into this as well?
You know what? Whenever I get tired of painting trees,
sometimes I put in a cloud.
Breckenridge
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 99, FORTHCOMING Paint it as You Ski it – Preppernau | 3
Certainly to show the mountain range beyond, I diminish
the contrast and detail. To distinguish the height of the
mountain, I’ll start with the top trees being snow-covered,
and as you go down they get greener. Of course, aerial
photographs are blue; it’s just monochromatic from the air.
Hal Shelton had always indicated to me that you paint it
as you ski it, not as you work from your aerial photographs,
so that helped in my early development.
The atmosphere is a great thing; sometimes I’ll bring a
whi of ground fog around the mountain to accentuate
something, or if there’s an area the client doesn’t want peo-
ple to get out to. A lot of times I like to put in clouds just
to show that you rise from below the clouds and get o the
lift above them, just to show the feeling of the mountain
and its vertical rise.
You’ve said, “paint it as it skis.” Can you unpack that
phrase?
I haven’t skied every mountain, but I’ve skied a lot of them.
When I relate my experience to the aerials that I’ve taken,
I relate that to other mountains and to how I’d be skiing
there even if I hadn’t. If a run looks wide and you have lots
of room to make turns, you want to widen it and narrow
it where it gets tighter. But on a satellite view, it might be
very hard to pick up where those changes are. So I think
it’s just an interpretation of the aerial photography.
In your book, you say you refer to topographic maps
quite a bit in this planning phase. When you’re looking
at a topo map, what are you looking for? To what extent
are you looking to translate certain things on that topo
map into your panoramic map?
I’ll be looking for rock formations; on a topo map you can
see where the terrain is a cli or not, and what I’m look-
ing for is whether there are any runs around it, or maybe
a chute through it, so that I can identify it in the photo-
graph. en I know I’ll have their run in the proper spot.
So what I’m looking for is deviations in the terrain, and
match them up with the aerial photography so that when I
interpret it, I interpret it correctly.
Have you ever experimented with a map that was look-
ing purely downhill?
Yeah, and I always thought that would be the way to do it
because that’s the way the skier’s going. e only problem
with it is that the runs are going up-page. It’s just hard
to relate to it. Plus, what they’re really interested in is the
base area. All the important ingredients of the resort are
in the distance instead of up close. e only one I did was
Sunday River, for Snow Country Magazine. I thought if
Keystone
Winter Park / Mary Jane
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 99, FORTHCOMING Paint it as You Ski it – Preppernau | 4
there’s any one that will work, it would be that one. I really
was not happy with the result although it came out to be
an interesting illustration.
Are there unique challenges in drawing summer scenes
as opposed to winter scenes?
Yeah, there are. I work with the airbrush on snowy ter-
rain, so it’s a pretty simple process. With my early summer
maps, I tried with the airbrush but it was so unrealistic, so
I turned to the brush entirely. I didn’t feel my brush ren-
dering was as eective as the airbrush, but I did develop it
into a pretty nice style. e latest ones are the Blackcomb
and Whistler hiking maps. I was really happy with those.
It’s maybe a sketchier style, but basically, you need to show
where there’s grass, brush, rock, or dirt, so it does become
quite more involved in summer and fall views. In my fall
views, I’ve always had a problem showing the trees as they
are. e Okemo autumn portion is probably my best tech-
nique on that.
You talked in your book about how you modified your
brushes to try to speed up the drawing of trees.
My predecessors used sponges. I tried that and it just didn’t
work for me. So then I experimented with cutting the
bristles of my brush to make two or three trunks instead
of just one. I didn’t really like that; it was too repetitive
and didn’t look natural. From that point, I said, “alright,
I’m going to have to draw in every trunk.” But I’ve been in
constant experimentation with deciduous trees. Looking
back on it, I’m happy with all of it but I do feel like later in
my career I got a little too involved in individual deciduous
trees, instead of groups of trees.
Okemo
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 99, FORTHCOMING Paint it as You Ski it – Preppernau | 5
Another element in all of this is that, ever since the 10th
painting, I didn’t want every mountain to look the same. I
wanted to give a mountain an individual look, so that’s the
reason for the experimentation. I was very lucky in that
I had a contract with Snow Country Magazine right off
the bat after I got into this. I could experiment on those
and not have to worry about the client saying, “Wow that
doesn’t look like your work”.
Did some of your later experiments have better success?
Yes, to some degree. For deciduous trees, they have round-
ed tops, so I’d use brushes that were rounded on the top.
And for meadows and stu, I’d use a very large brush to
put in wider strokes of color. I really got into re-wetting
the forest. I’d put in a pattern of trees with a very wet
brush, a very dark color, and make my forest. I wouldn’t
Sun Peaks
Crystal
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 99, FORTHCOMING Paint it as You Ski it – Preppernau | 6
even take my brush o the board. I’d just be up and down,
making these triangular shapes. I would change my pig-
ment according to whether it was the light side of the
mountain or the dark side of the mountain. And then I
would come in and re-wet that. e watercolor would ow
in between and you’d get a lot of variations in your color.
en I would put in the highlights and the shadowed side
which would usually be snow; blue and white.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on how much freedom you
think a mapmaker has in distorting a map, and what
kind of responsibility they have to the reader.
I feel that if it’s overexaggerated it loses its value immedi-
ately because it can be seen and not believed. You have to
keep it in the credibility range.
Let me change directions on you a little bit here. I’m
working on the Great American Landscape Project. I’m
picking out state and national parks and other very pop-
ular dynamic areas, and sketching them to the best of my
ability to express the best view there can be of that partic-
ular subject.
Let’s take Yosemite Valley. e most photographed view
in the park is the tunnel view, with Bridal Veil Falls on the
right and El Capitan on the left. I’ve own that area, and I
looked at my aerials and thought “You know, I could show
the whole valley and include Yosemite Falls, show more of
Half Dome, show Royal Arch, and the spires that are on
the backside of Bridal Veil Falls, if I did a little manipulat-
ing.” In my aerials you can’t even see what I have sketched;
Yosemite Falls is quite hidden by the ree Brothers. So,
what I had to do was diminish the ree Brothers a little
bit, and pull around Yosemite Falls so that it shows, and
then I thought, “Oh the village is right down there so I’ll
put in the village”. So, I peel away some of those tall trees
enough to show the village and roads.
Another was Crater Lake, Oregon. is spring we stopped
there and it was fabulous, just really dynamic. So I took all
these photographs and came back to this point that had
Yosemite Valley
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 99, FORTHCOMING Paint it as You Ski it – Preppernau | 7
some features along the shoreline that I was really im-
pressed with. Although, from that point, I could not see
Mount iessen, because it was hidden by a rim on the
other side of the lake. So what I did was bring Mount
iessen out from hiding. is isn’t accurate, but it’s ac-
curate to the experience. It isn’t more than 500 yards down
the road that you can see [iessen], but I had to do some
manipulation to show them together. ere are also hik-
ing trails that you can’t see in the trees, but I put them in,
so someone can say “I was on that trail, that’s where I was,
and that’s the scene I saw.” And that’s very important, that
connection to the viewer.
I’m very excited about this series. You’ll nd them on my
website, scattered around in dierent states.
I’d like to finish by asking: if someone came up to you
and said they would like to get into painting panoramas
like this, what advice would you give them?
I guess what I would do is kinda what I’m doing with the
Great American Landscape project; I would take on a
project and use it to promote my availability. What ma-
terial I haven’t own, I would go on the Internet and see
what comes up. From that material, I’d go ahead and put
together what you felt would be the best view, if not as a
map, then as a portrait.
Thank you so much, this was a great conversation to
have.
Oh yeah, you bet. I’ve enjoyed it.
Crater Lake
