August 2014

I've been trying to keep going with my painting to keep from losing some of what little skill I have. It seems that the more often I paint, the more sure my brush strokes and the better my paintings. If I neglect it for very long, when I start again, I feel a lot less sure of what I am doing. In that way it is kind of like playing the guitar or any musical instrument. Regular practice makes it better.

A few weeks ago, Maureen and I spent a Sunday with our son, Aaron, his wife, Alicia, and our three-year-old grandson, Dylan. We took the ferry from Alameda to San Francisco and wandered around Fisherman's Wharf. We had a great time, and on the way back home, the ferry made a stop at Angel Island. On the way back, we had a nice view of the Golden Gate with the fog bank just beyond it, and a sailboat floating by. I thought it would make a good scene for a painting, so I shot it with my iPhone. I included the heads of a couple of passengers to show that the wind was a major part of the scene.

I decided to try another scene from our visit with my cousin John and his wife Pat in Colorado. This is the view from the front of their house. Actually, it is put together from several photos, but it is not too far from reality. They have such a beautiful place that wherever you look you see something like this.

July 2014

This summer I haven't been as productive with my painting as I could have been. I guess I need my weekly class to keep me going. Maureen and I went on a great trip to Utah and Colorado in early July, and I brought home lots of photos that I hoped to turn into paintings. But for some reason, I've been reluctant to get started. It may be that some of the places we saw were just so beautiful that I'm afraid that my art will fall far short of showing them as they are. I know that I should just keep telling myself that it doesn't matter, that painting anything is better than not painting at all.

 I have managed to do a couple of paintings, however. For this first one, I thought that maybe if I tried something that was not from our trip, I could get myself started. In my last blog post, I showed one of a group of riders crossing a creek. There was another photo from that same ride in Big Basin State Park that I had wanted to paint, so that's what I chose to do. This is West Waddell Creek, just below Berry Creek Falls. I wanted to see what I could do with the lush greenness and the reflections in the water, and I think I did pretty well.

This morning, I finally tried one from our trip. We stayed several days with my cousin, John, and his wife, Pat, at their place in the mountains near Boulder. Late one afternoon, I spent some time just wandering around taking pictures that I thought might become paintings. This one was of their driveway with a puddle from a recent rainstorm. Yes, they actually have rain in the summertime there, something that made us Californians quite envious. I don't usually do so much with clouds, but I thought it was worth a try. The painting was fairly quickly done, and is rather sketchy, but I think I caught some of the beauty of the place.