The first class project was to be based on a photo of part of a Japanese bridge and lots of pink and white blossoms. We did something similar last spring and I didn't really care for it all that much, so on starting this one, my attitude was not entirely positive. But I thought that I could go ahead and do my own thing with it. I saw that another student in the class was using her own photo which showed some water under a bridge, so I decided to put in a stream too. We started by applying masking fluid with a sponge to make lots of white blossoms, but I got more blobs than blossoms. Then we added pink blossoms also with the sponge, and so more blobs. I spent a lot more time trying to make something out of it, but it is not one of my favorites.
Meanwhile, at home, I thought I could make something from a couple of photos that I took with my iPhone one day at the beach at Pescadero. One photo was of the surf and the hole in the rock, and another was a close-up of some ice plant. I combined the two and I think it worked out pretty well.
I liked what I had done recently based on old photos of the mountains, and wanted to continue with that. I have many great memories of places that I have been in the Sierra, and hope that I can express some my feelings about them in my paintings. So I've been looking for scenes that do more than just show off the beauty of a particular place, ones that also show how it felt to be there. In the summer of 2001, my friend, Gerald and I hiked the John Muir Trail. On the evening before we started out from Tuolumne Meadows, we sat on a rock by the river for a long time watching the water flow by. And I took the photo that I used for this painting.
Of the hundreds of photos I took on that three-week trip, one seemed to do an especially good job of summing up what it was like to be there. On our 13th day, we arrived at Palisades Lakes after a very hard day of hiking, set up camp, and finally got to relax and enjoy our surroundings. I used a bit of artistic license, and made the ridge a bit more rugged than the photo, but otherwise the scene is quite accurate.
