March 2019

One day in early February, I went up Mt. Diablo for a hike. A couple of days before, it had snowed on the mountain, but I didn't care about that, I just wanted to do some hiking. I found that the road up was closed at Juniper Camp, and the parking lot was filled with people come to play in the snow. I started up the trail to the summit, and took a few photos along the way, including the one that inspired this painting. I think I did a pretty good job of it. The trail began to be dangerously icy in spots, so I gave up and turned back before reaching the top, but I had a great afternoon anyway.

For the last project for the winter session of my painting class, we painted a couple of toucans. Ron had just returned from a vacation in Costa Rica, and that may have inspired his choice of subject. The birds and branch were masked to paint a quick wet-on-wet background, and for once, I refrained from trying to fix it. That made it a better painting.

February 2019

Another class project was based on one of Ron's photos of the coast at Pacific Grove. The photo was of an overcast day, and a bit uninspiring, but it did show some nice rocks and waves. It was easy enough to make it a sunny day with a blue sky. Ron masked the white parts of the waves, but I just painted around them. It was fun to paint and I think mine came out pretty good.

This winter has been a very rainy one, but one rare nice day I went for a hike in Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park. Out in the middle of this big natural area I came across this house and barn, a park employee residence. It made a nice scene so I took a photo with my iphone. The painting went quite well, and I like the result.

On another rare nice day, I went hiking in Mt. Diablo State Park. I started at the Mitchell Canyon Entrance and went up the Mitchell Rock Trail. I took a bunch of photos. Many of them are spectacular distant views, but I wanted to paint something that was more close-up, a more intimate view. I chose one showing the rocky trail up the mountainside. I wanted to keep it fairly loose and impressionistic, but at least somewhat real, and it turned out to be quite a challenge. Without any easily recognizable shapes like buildings or figures, I found it hard to make it look like more than just abstract shapes and colors. It may not be one of my better paintings, but I feel that it is heading in the right direction, toward something that has more feeling than just a pretty picture.

January 2019

The winter session of my painting class was about to start and I wanted to get warmed up a few days early. Maureen had turned me on to a Facebook group called "Eastern Sierra & Scenic Hwy 395" where lots of people post photos and artwork, and many of them are very good photographers. On that site I found a photo of an old wagon in the ghost town of Bodie, and I decided to paint it. I am quite pleased with how it turned out and it helped boost confidence in my painting again.

For quite some time I've been thinking that a good source of ideas for paintings would be my photos of hiking the John Muir Trail in 2001. I thought that it would be cool to have a series of paintings that would illustrate the story of my adventure. I've already done a couple of them, but this was the first one that I did with the idea in mind that it was the beginning of a series. Five of us started out from Tuolumne Meadows, and after several hours of hiking up Lyell Canyon, came across this view of Mt. Lyell, highest peak in Yosemite. The painting is a bit messy, but I like that I just plunged in and did most of it with just a few big washes with a large brush.

My first class project of the new year was a sunset scene in snowy mountains.

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.