June 2017

My next class project was an ocean sunset with three catamarans in the distance. In the photo, I was attracted by a pink glow in the sky with some very soft clouds, and the reflection of the sunlight in the water. It looked simple, but turned out to be quite challenging and my painting fell far short of what I imagined it to be. But at least I tried to get more of the effects of the photo than Ron did in his demonstration.

For our last project of the season, we worked from another of Ron's photos, one of a man standing somewhere in Mexico. We all seem to be reluctant to paint scenes with people, because it is so obvious when they don't look right, but I am usually surprised that it is not really that hard to just paint what I see. At our last class, after finishing this painting, we had our usual potluck and then Larry, Cheryl, Lynn and I played some music to entertain the class.

One day out at the ranch near Livermore where we board our horses, I noticed this horse looking very stark black and white against the muted colors of an overcast day, and shot a photo with my phone with the idea of painting it. The horse is a gypsy vanner, a breed from the British Isles used to pull wagons. Most of this painting was done quite fast and loose, and I am quite pleased with the result.

May 2017

The most recent class project was a hillside with poppies and lupine. I don't know the location of Ron's photo, and he probably doesn't know either. It looked more like southern California than around here. Often, when I use masking fluid, I am not very happy with the results, so although the whole class masked out the flowers, I chose not to. It was a bit tedious painting the green grass around the flowers, but it came out all right.

In between class projects I've been doing some paintings from my photos from High Sierra trips of years past. This one was an interesting juniper tree near Bull Run Lake, off of Highway 4. Maureen and I made several weekend backpacking trips there in the '90s.

This one was at Crown Lake in the Bridgeport area. My friend, Gerald, and I spent five days exploring this country in the late '90s.

April 2017

On the last day of the winter session of my painting classs, the project was to do a quick painting of a photo of a bunch of flowers, but I had already done that the week before, so I chose to do something with a photo I took the previous summer. We had been spending a few days in the Big Sur area, and stopped at Nepenthe for a coffee at the cafe below the restaurant. I noticed this woman admiring the view and snapped a shot of her with my phone. Since we were having our usual potluck for the last day of class, I painted fairly quickly, trying to keep it simple with large areas of solid color.

For the first class of the spring session, I found one of my old photos from the mountains. Around 20 years ago, we were camped at Mammoth Lakes, and one day I hiked up beyond Crystal Lake to the top of Mammoth Crest. I was enjoying walking across this high plateau when this dead tree caught my eye and I got a photo of it. I thought it captured some what I love about this timberline country. After I had painted this one, I remembered that I had painted the same scene many years ago, so I dug out my old painting and compared them. Although my old one was not bad, the new one was much better, and I really like it.

While I was looking through old photos, I also came across an older one that I thought would be good to paint. One night around 1970, I drove up through Yosemite alone to Saddlebag Lake, and the next day climbed Mt. Conness, at 12,590 ft., the highest Sierra peak north of Tioga Pass. It was quite an adventure which involved crossing a glacier, crossing the bergschrund on a snow bridge and a bit of class 3 climbing on the face above it. I didn't have an ice axe or crampons, which would have been appropriate for the steep snow of the glacier, and on the way down I fell and slid quite a distance, luckily with no injuries but a few scrapes and bruises. As I passed the first lake below the glacier, I shot the photo that inspired this painting. The turquoise blue of the lake is typical of lakes below glaciers.

March 2017

Last May, and then again in October, we went to four-day riding and training clinics with our favorite horse expert, Chris Ellsworth. They took place at our friend Jody's place near Placerville, and Jody let us stay in her house there. She has become a good friend, and we see her nearly every day because she has two horses boarded at the same place as ours, and Rocky, her Tennessee Walker shares a pen with our horse, Zim. Rocky is a very friendly horse, and I enjoy seeing him whenever I go to get Zim. Jody has done plenty of nice things for us, so I did this painting of Rocky to give to her.

In my painting class, I spent a day working on my painting of Rocky instead of the class project, which was a little kitten peeking through a hole in a concrete wall. Then last week, I would have started on the kitten, but Ron had put out copies of a photo of some flowers to be used for next week's project, a fast, loose painting. Ron doesn't mind if we don't follow his schedule, so I went ahead and painted the flowers a week early. I spent about an hour on this, and I think it came out pretty good, considering the time spent.

February 2017

The first class project of the winter session was a lake at sunset with snow all around. I don't know where Ron got the photo or where it was taken, but it was a pretty scene, and I enjoyed painting it. In his demonstration, Ron masked out the snow, but I didn't, and found it fairly easy to paint around it. He likes to use a lot of masking, and I think it is partly because it makes things a bit easier for less experienced students. I find that I am not very good at masking, and I would rather not use it. When I started this painting with the sky and its reflection, I thought I had made a complete mess of it, but when I had done the rest, it looked pretty good. One thing I did different from Ron and the rest of the class was to add a blue cast to the snow, making my painting look colder than theirs. I like it that way. I feel that this scene should look kind of cold.

Next, we did a still life of apples from a photo by Ron. Once again, he used masking for the apples, but I didn't feel that they needed it. I just used it for a few white spots to make the apples look shiny. I think I did a pretty good job with this one.

Then we did a lion. I did use masking on this one to make it easier to paint the background as a formless wet wash. But then I didn't like my formless wash. I wanted it darker and with a bit more form to it, so I added a bunch more vegetation. I still didn't like it very much, but several people around me commented on how they liked it, so I continued on with the lion, and it turned out better than I expected.

January 2017

I did one last painting at the end of the fall session of my class. This was based on one of Ron's photos of some very colorful parrots. Most of the class only did the single parrot, but I included the two in the background of the photo because I liked the way they looked in the photo. It was fun to use all of the bright colors.

When the class started up again in the new year, I knew that there would not be a class project for the first class, but I didn't really have any good ideas about what to paint. I looked through recent photos on my iphone, and thought about a couple of them with dramatic clouds, but that sounded a bit difficult. Ron usually brings in a big pile of color copies from old class projects, and one of an old wrecked boat caught my eye. Ron said that he took the photo somewhere on Tomales Bay. I worked fast on this one and finished it well before the end of the class. Whenever I have gone a month or more without painting, I always feel like I need to do a throw-away painting just to get back into the feel of it. This time, although it's not one of my best, at least it's not a throw-away.

November 2016

I didn't do much painting through the summer. There were several trips out of town, but that's no excuse. I could have brought my painting supplies with me. I guess I was lacking inspiration. That's one reason I keep going to Ron Pratt's class — it pushes me to paint something whether or not I'm inspired. The following paintings have all been done since the class resumed in September.

We spent five days in the Mammoth Lakes area in September, and the first day of class I chose to do something based on a photo that I took there. One day we hiked up to Arrowhead Lake, and found this beautiful spot for Darby to play in the water. Now that he is eleven years old, he doesn't want to chase a stick into the water all day, but he is still up for a few times. I always find painting water quite a challenge, but I think I did pretty well with this one.

Our first class project was to paint something for a holiday card. I had painted a snow scene with a little stream a few months ago, and thought I could do something similar and add in a group of three bucks from a photo that I took when we were horse camping in August. It came out all right, but I wasn't completely satisfied with it so I decided to try something else.

Last February we had a family weekend in the snow near Bear Valley. One day while the grandkids were busy sliding down hills, I walked up to the top of the hill to see what I could see and took a photo of the view. I used it for this painting by adding some color to the sky, which was mostly gray, and putting lights on the little tree. I think this is the one that we will use for cards this year.

Now that I have been in the painting class for several years, I am finding that some projects keep repeating. Every fall we have done something with fall colors and aspens or birches with white trunks. It's a lesson on the use of masking fluid with watercolor. I guess I am getting a bit tired of this kind of thing. I didn't get very excited about it, though I went ahead and painted it anyway. It's not one of my favorites.

Then we did another fall scene, with an old mill. I got much more into this one because I liked the photo that we worked from. It had lots of pretty leaves in the foreground. Ron painted it as a distant scene without the foreground leaves, but I wanted to try to get them into my painting. It was a bit more challenging to do it that way, but I think I did it pretty well. It's my favorite of all the paintings I have done recently.