October 2021

 

I had been thinking about doing a portrait of Zim for a while, but was reluctant to try it because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to paint him well enough. One day at Jack Brook Horse Camp, we were getting him ready for Maureen to go out on a trail ride, and I shot a close-up with my phone. I liked the shot so I decided to use it for a painting. I think it came out pretty good.

I looked around for something else to paint, and came across a photo from our trip to England and Ireland in 2000. We were with my distant cousin Margaret and her husband, Bernard, and they had been driving us all over Ireland. We ferried across from Belfast to Scotland and drove south to the Lake District of England. The first lake that we came to was Ullswater, and we stopped on the shore for a photo. Turning around and looking in the opposite direction, I noticed this beautiful farm with the misty mountains, took another shot. When I showed the painting to Maureen, she asked what were all the white dots. I thought it was obvious that they were supposed to be sheep, but maybe it's not so obvious.

 In early October, 1974, I made a trip to the mountains with my friend, Bill Dodge, and a couple of his teen age nieces who were visiting from the midwest. Our goal was to climb Mt. Conness on the eastern border of Yosemite. We drove up late in the evening and camped at Saddlebag Lake. After a cold night, I woke up at dawn and hurried up a little hill to get a photo of the beautiful pink clouds over Mt. Dana, which inspired this painting. We climbed high up on a shoulder of Mt. Conness and realized that getting to the top would be too much for us, but we did enjoy some great views. Back at camp, we packed up and left as snow began to fall, the beginning of a major storm that we were lucky to escape.

 Our horse, Zim, spent a couple of months in the Placerville area with Chris Ellsworth because of an epidemic of strangles, a serious equine disease, at our barn. We went back up there to visit Zim several times. Chris had a horse there in training, a large Friesian mare named Bella. One day we watched him work with her in the arena and I took a photo. I liked the way that the late afternoon sun lit the scene and it inspired me to paint it.

September 2021

 

In early September my painting class started up again after a year and a half of the pandemic. I was looking forward to going back, but when I arrived at the first class, I realized that it wouldn't be the same as before. Sitting in a classroom with a mask on was not so much fun and although there were only about 10 people, I didn't know who had been vaccinated, and that made me a bit nervous. I used the time to paint this view of the old ranch house at Jack Brook Horse Camp where we had been recently.

The following week at my class I started this painting of another scene from Jack Brook Horse Camp with the morning fog clearing. I inserted a couple of riders from another photo (Maureen and Christina). All I did in class was the blue sky, and then quit because I thought it was too messed up. Back at home I decided that I may as well finish it, and it is not too bad, but not one of my favorites. The fog in the trees is not very convincing. I missed the following week of class and then decided that I didn't really want to go back, so I'm just going to try to keep painting at home.