In April, our friends Norma and Mike invited us up to their ranch deep in the hills southeast of Livermore. The wildflowers were at their best, and we walked up the ranch road to admire them. In my painting class, our next project was to paint the "superbloom", the amazing displays of wildflowers brought on by our wet winter, especially in southern California. Those scenes didn't excite me much. I wanted to paint a place that seemed more real to me, someplace that I had actually experienced. I chose to work from one of my photos from Norma and Mike's ranch with a field of poppies.
I found another photo online that I liked and wanted to paint. I'm not sure of the exact location but I think it is in the Buttermilks west of Bishop. I really like high desert places like this and I like my painting a lot.
Another class project was to paint this scene of the entrance gate to San Francisco's Chinatown. It was a very busy scene but didn't try for too much accurate detail. After two class periods, I was done, and I looked around and no one else was anywhere close to being finished. They all joke about how fast I paint, but it doesn't feel fast to me. I spend a lot of time just sitting and thinking about what to do next, and waiting for areas to dry. I'm not sure what the others do that takes so long.
A couple of months ago I painted a scene from my 2001 hike on the John Muir Trail, but I wasn't completely satisfied with it and thought I could do better. I almost never try to repeat a painting, but I know that many other artists do with good results, so I tried it with this one. The scene is at the upper end of Lyell Canyon in Yosemite, when Mt. Lyell first appears. This time I added some people. I had another photo of my son Aaron, his wife Alicia, and her brother Ray sitting on the bank, and I used it to add them into this scene. I think it improves the painting a lot, and I like it.
