More Spring 2014

The second project for my watercolor class was a flower garden. The idea was to start by using masking fluid to mask a few flowers to be white ones, then add a few blobs of color for more flowers and mask flower shapes over them, do the same again with some other colors until we had lots of colorful flowers, all masked. Then the background, which was mostly green, was added, and finally the masking removed to reveal an almost finished painting. It was fun to do, and I think mine came out pretty good, but since I'm not much into gardening, the flowers are all imaginary, and there is not much connection with reality like I usually try for in my painting.

In between class projects, I did a couple of other paintings of High Sierra scenes which have a lot more connection with reality. Both of these are from photos taken on a 2008 backpacking trip with my friend, Gerald.

This one is of Pioneer Basin, which was our ultimate goal of the trip. We spent the morning of our third day of the trip in the basin, Gerald doing some fishing and me wandering around taking photos. It is a very beautiful area, a string of small lakes near timberline at 11,000 ft. I had fond memories from when my dad and I visited it nearly 50 years ago. I like this painting a lot. I can see in it the powerful high country light, the cool, thin air, the silence.

This one is a little meadow just below Ruby Lake, which we passed on our first day of hiking. Clouds were starting to build up over the incredible 13,000 ft. ridge behind the lake. I really like the way this one came out too.

Recently, Maureen and I went to see the Georgia O'Keefe exhibit at the De Young Museum. It was of her Lake George years, and included her giant close-ups of flowers, and some abstract work. Afterwards, I kept thinking that I wish I could paint stuff like that, and maybe I should try to put more abstraction into my painting. As you can see from the above paintings, it didn't happen. I seem to be stuck on realism, at least for now. But I'm going to keep trying to let new ways of seeing get into my artwork.