January 2016

As last year's holiday season approached, there just didn't seem to be time for painting. The fall session of my painting class ended mid-November and then one of my classmates, Joe Annunziato, talked me into showing some of my work at a arts and crafts show at Crow Canyon Country Club. I put a lot of effort into getting a bunch of paintings matted and framed, and I decided that finally I would try to sell some of them. The show was a good experience — some good and some not so much. I got to meet a lot of people and heard a lot of praise for my work, but I felt out of place in the country club environment and no one expressed any interest in buying anything. After participating in several shows now, I realize that the business side of art doesn't really excite me, and I could do without it for a while.

My painting class started up again the first week of January and for the first class I painted a scene from the ranch near Livermore where we board our horses. It is a beautiful location north of town where there are miles of open ranch land and rolling hills. I kept noticing this little run-down house all alone against the hills and took several photos of it. The painting is mostly big wet washes and it didn't take very long to do. I feel that it is not one of my best, but it got me started painting again.

For the second class, the idea was to do something faster and looser than usual. We worked from a photo of a bunch of eucalyptus trunks. Ron encouraged us to kind of go wild with colors which was fun. Eucalyptus bark actually is quite colorful if you look at it closely. The assignment was to do something in less than an hour, and that's what I did here.

The last couple of classes have been devoted to a winter river scene. Ron supplied a photo that he took of the Stanislaus River somewhere above Arnold. The photo showed ice along the shore but not much snow, but it was easy to add more snow to the painting. It is the kind of scene that I enjoy painting and I feel that I did it quite well.