June 2015

For the last painting of my class, we did a scene with a fly fisherman in a river with a fish on the line jumping. I was looking forward to working on it since it seemed that we would finally be doing something that was more in line with my interests. But I started on it without giving much thought to what I was going to do with it, and it quickly became a mess. Later, at home, I tried to patch it up and finish the painting, but with watercolor it is easy to go too far and ruin a painting, and any attempt to fix it just makes it worse. In the past, I have gone ahead and shown paintings like that here on my blog just to show some of the learning process, but now I feel that I don't need to show everything.

I guess I'm starting to take my painting more seriously. I'm starting to exhibit some of my work, and plan to try selling some of it soon. This spring the Sun Gallery here in Hayward showed six of my paintings, and right now I have two paintings showing at the Alameda County Fair. I also get a lot of praise for my work from the people in my class, and that is a big help to my self-confidence. Whenever I begin to feel swell-headed, all I need to do is look at the work of more experienced painters to see that I have a long way yet to go.

A couple of weeks ago, Maureen's riding teacher, Jessica, hosted a 5-day horsemanship clinic with Chris Ellsworth at her home on Jody Moran's ranch near Placerville. We trailered our two horses up there and set up our tent in the yard. It's a beautiful location in the foothills near the Cosumnes River, with lots of oaks and pines and big granite boulders. The weather was very hot, and the horses were a lot of hard work, but we had a great time anyway. Back home, I wanted to paint something from the trip, and I chose a photo from the first day of the clinic when they were still working on the ground. I wanted an overall view to show what the place was like. Not much detail shows on the people or horses, but that was not my intention anyway. While we were at the clinic, we gave Chris my painting of him at last year's cow-working clinic (see my post "more May 2015"), and he was very appreciative.

Last weekend, we spent five days at a friend's cabin near Big Sur. Maureen and I spent one day with just the two of us before we were joined by our two sons and their families. It got a bit wild at times with four kids and six adults in a tiny cabin, but we had a great time. That first evening, Maureen and I went out to dinner at the Rocky Point Restaurant to celebrate our anniversary (43 years). The food wasn't very special, but the setting is spectacular. This painting is based on a couple of photos from the restaurant.