December 2018

It seems that I have been neglecting this blog for a while. I've neglected my painting too. I let the summer go by without doing any artwork and didn't get started again until my class resumed in October.

At the end of the spring session of my class in June, we painted a cluster of grapes. I thought I had made a mess of the background painting, but it finally turned our all right. The grapes were going pretty good until I added the dark shadows and then they looked a bit flat. But rather than try to fix it, which might have made it worse, I called it done.

When the fall session of my class began, I started with a scene from our recent trip to Mammoth Lakes. We usually start off our first day there by walking around the Sherwin Creek Campground. For many years it was our favorite place to camp, but now we stay in a cabin at Tamarack Lodge. We love that area where desert sagebrush meets alpine forests, a place that feels very alive. I think I captured some of that feeling here even though it was done quickly and kind of sloppily. It's kind of bittersweet because I included our dog, Darby, and this was his last trip with us before he died of cancer.

Then our next class project was to paint something to use on a holiday card. I chose to try working from a photo of two of my grandkids, Makaila and Zack with the snowman that they built. I usually avoid trying to paint people, but went ahead with this anyway. It's not bad, but it doesn't look much like Makaila and Zack, and I decided not to use it for a card.

The class was still working on this project the following week, so I tried another snow scene. What I liked best about the photo that I used was the shadow of the tree on the snow. I was hoping to get that done with one quick wet on wet pass, but the blue spread too much and I went back and tried to fix it later. I still like it pretty well, but it is not what I had hoped for. I'd still like to learn how to paint wet soft edges, but so far it is way out of reach for me.

In the fall session of my class, we always do at least one scene with colorful trees. Some of the ones that we have done in the past have not interested me much, but I liked this one because the water made it more interesting. This one was fun to paint, but a bit scary at the end because after spending quite a lot of time on the trees, the success of the painting depended on the reflections which had to be done very quickly. I was lucky this time and mine came out all right. The white streaks were masked, and they may have come out better if I had lifted them out with a thirsty brush like Ron did.

Our last class project of the year was a tiger. It involved masking the tiger to paint the background, then painting the shape of the tiger and adding the stripes last. I think mine came out surprisingly good.

May 2018

This painting of a vase of roses was a class project. Ron demonstrated it painting fast and loose, but although it started out looking rough, he turned it into a very nice painting. Mine didn't work out so well. But maybe I learned something from the experience. I hope so. I wasn't going to include it on this blog, but then I changed my mind. I don't need to prove how good I am as an artist. There is a lot of luck involved in watercolor painting, and some days you have it and some days you don't.

Here is another questionable painting. At the beginning of one class Ron provided prints of a Golden Gate Bridge photo. I went ahead and started painting it before he began his demonstration. I just sketched it freehand and painted it fairly quickly and simply. I soon realized that the proportions of the bridge were off, but I finished it anyway.

The following week, I started over again, this time tracing the photo to get the bridge looking better. This one turned out better than the first, but still not so great.

Then we worked on a vineyard scene with rows of young grapes. This felt more like my kind of thing and I had a good time doing it. I think it turned out pretty good.

My last class project of the season was a wave crashing on rocks. Most of the work of the painting was using masking fluid to make the wave. This one was also fun to do and I like it.

March 2018

This was another class project. Most of the class felt uneasy at the prospect of painting a face, but everyone did suprisingly well. I think mine came out pretty good. The original photo had a very dark background like my painting, but in his demonstration, Ron started painting a lighter colored background in blues and reds, intending to add the darker background later, but changed his mind and left the background as it was. I thought it needed the darkness, so I made mine dark.

The next class project was a view of Lower Yosemite Falls from a photo recently taken by Ron. It was a nice photo and felt like just the kind of scene that I like to paint. I was able to keep it pretty loose, and I think it one of my better paintings.

Then we did a scene from a calendar of the lone cypress on the 17 mile drive near Monterey. I remember seeing it on a family vacation when I was a kid, but not since then. We have spent a lot of time in the area over the years, but never did the drive again.

For the first class of the spring session, I chose to work from a photo that I took with my phone one day when the sky was filled with dramatic clouds. It is looking south from Diamond Hills, north of Livermore, the ranch where our horses are boarded. I mostly wanted to see what I could do with the clouds. I found it a bit challenging, but overall, not too bad.

January 2018

Last fall, for one of my painting classes, I decided to work from a photo that I had taken on a walk in the nearby woods, a close-up of leaves under bigleaf maple trees. After spending a couple of hours on the painting in class, I thought it was a total mess and put it aside. I ignored it for a couple of months and then recently looked at it again, and thought it had some potential, so I worked on it some more, and now I like it.

This class project was based on a photo of some colored glass vases of flowers. The photo didn't really do much for me, but painting the glass would be an interesting challenge, so I went ahead and tried it.