May 2020

I came across a photo on Facebook that I thought would be fun to paint. It is a waterfall in the Lake Tahoe area. I've never seen the falls, but it is typical of lots of places I have been in the Sierra. I am quite happy with the result.

I decided to continue with my idea of painting photos from my 2001 hike of the John Muir Trail. This one was of a group of dead trees that caught my eye on the climb toward Pinchot Pass. There was something about it that captured the feeling of being high in the mountains, near timberline. It was one of my favorite photos, and I'm happy with the painting too.

Then I tried another one from the John Muir Trail. My friend, Gerald, is leading the way as we approached the end of the trail at the summit of Mt. Whitney after dropping our packs at a trail junction. When I showed my painting to Maureen, she said that it looked like a scene from a sci-fi movie. It was a pretty amazing landscape of barren rock at over 14,000 ft. elevation.

I added another one from the John Muir Trail. This scene is from around the halfway point of our hike, day 10 along the South Fork of the San Joaquin River in Goddard Canyon. The trail is not all timberline country — in between the high passes are deep canyons and beautiful rivers. One thing that caught my eye when I took the photo was the morning light putting the river in and out of shadow and I wanted to show that in my painting. I think it worked pretty well.

April 2020

For some time I had been thinking of painting our horse, Rio, who passed away two years ago at the age of 30. I looked up a few photos to work from, but kept avoiding getting started because I was afraid that wouldn't be able to do justice to his memory. Rio was one of my best friends for many years and carried me on his back on many adventurous rides. Finally, one day in my painting class, I started sketching from one of my photos and then just went ahead and painted with the idea that it would only be a trial run for a later finished painting. I chose the photo with our other horse, Zach on his left and Maureen on his right because they all belonged together. Zach and Rio were very good buddies, and Maureen loved them both. Rio's tongue was often hanging out and I left it showing that way. We think that it was because of something they did to him in his younger days in quarter horse racing. When I was about half done, my teacher, Monica, commented that it would have been better to paint the background first. I agreed, but then couldn't decide what kind of background to use, and thought it would be better to just leave it out. Now that it is done, I think that it worked out pretty good and I don't need to do another, at least not right away.

In my painting class, Monica demonstrated a couple of approaches to painting fog, and asked students who were interested to give it a try. I found a photo from one of our horse camping trips of an old fence and morning fog. I think it turned out pretty good, but I didn't get a chance to show the class because before the class met again, it was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

After a couple of weeks of the shelter in place order, I felt like I should use the time for painting, but somehow just couldn't get moving. I finally painted this scene of Castle Rock and Pine Creek Canyon at the western edge of Mount Diablo State Park where I went hiking in February. One of the best things about my painting class is that I can stay motivated to paint when I can share it with others. Without the class, it is not so easy.

One day at the barn, while watching Maureen riding in the arena, I noticed a lizard sunning himself on the deck. He was a cute little guy and I thought it might be fun to paint him, so I took a photo with my phone. I've never been very fond of reptiles, but I've grown to appreciate all kinds of life.

At the end of January, we spent a weekend in a rented mountain cabin with our sons and their families, and played in the snow near Bear Valley. While the kids were sliding down the hills, I looked around for some untracked snow and took a few pictures. I loved the way that layers of snow perched on the rocks.

January 2020

I've started a new painting class, taught by Monica Satherthwaite at the San Lorenzo Adult School. It's turning out to be a good class. Monica has a different approach than Ron's class. Instead of having everyone paint the same subject by following the teacher's demonstration step by step, she encourages the students to find their own subjects. While much of the class are painting whatever they want, she works with small groups demonstrating various techniques. Every class begins with a half hour of quick study, a silent time when everyone does a quick sketch or painting, usually of some kind of still life. Like my previous class, it is a nice group of mostly older people, many of whom have been there for years.

There are many aspects of Monica's approach that differ from Ron's. One is that she asks us to work with a limited palette which she specifies as follows: Scarlet Lake, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Thalo Green, Thalo Blue, Ultramarine, and Violet. It is taking me a while to get used to working without some of the colors that I used to depend on, and learning how to mix substitutes for them. After setting up a new palette with these colors and a bit of practice, I decided to see what I could do with this scene from a photo that Maureen took a couple of years ago at the place where we often stay at Mammoth Lakes. I am quite pleased with the way it turned out.

One day a few weeks ago I went for a walk in the bayshore marshes just south of the San Mateo Bridge approach. There were not as many shore birds as I expected, but I did get some photos of an egret, and decided to paint it in my class.

On another day in class I started working on a scene with Maureen riding Zim on the Goldenrod Trail near the barn where our horses live. I wanted to show the light coming through the trees, and I think I got some of it at least.

November 2019

Every fall, my painting class does an autumn scene with masked white tree trunks and lots of color. I had done a lot of these, and I didn't get much inspiration from the photo that we were supposed to base our painting on. I found one of my own, and image from the internet of a creek in an aspen forest. This was a lot more fun than the class project would have been.

The last project of the year was a scene with the aurora borealis. For this I also found an image online, and tried to paint it. I tried to follow Ron's example and paint most of it in two layers. After that, I still wasn't satisfied with my painting, so I tried to add a third layer, and that just made a mess. I had given up with it, but at the last class I didn't have anything else that I wanted to paint, so I started over, intending to just do something quick to pass the time. This time I painted all of the color and dark sky in one quick wet-on-wet pass. It turned out better than I expected and all it took to finish it was to add some spattered opaque white stars and some dark trees. Maureen liked it better than any of my other recent paintings, so we used it to have a holiday card printed.

A few days after that last class, I received an e-mail from Ron saying that he had had some problems with the administration for the recreation district that hired him, and he was quitting the job. For the last seven years I have been enjoying the class and the group of students that have become like a family, and it was a shock to find that it was now finished. Several of us got together by e-mail and found another class given by the San Lorenzo Adult School. We visited the class and it looked good, so seven of us signed up for it. It will be quite a change from our old class, but I'm looking forward to it.

October 2019

Last summer I added one more painting from the John Muir Trail. On our way up to Silver Pass, we passed this marmot on the rocks. I could have zoomed in on the marmot, but I wanted this to be more about his rocky habitat. I felt that a close-up of the rocks said more to me about the place than the many expansive views in my photos.

When my painting class started up again in September, our first project was a trumpet player that Ron had photographed in New Orleans. I thought the background was a total mess when I started, but now that it is done, I like it.

Our second class project was to paint something for a holiday card. We had just returned from a couple of weeks in west coast Canada, and I wanted to do something from that. We had visited the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and saw these totem poles and houses in an outdoor exhibit. After days of gray skies, dark forests and wide views of sea and islands, I felt that the native artwork said a lot about this environment, so I tried to put it all together in this painting.

July 2019

My painting class was done for the summer, but I wanted to keep it going. I decided to do some more work on the series that I had in mind of scenes from my 2001 hike of the John Muir Trail. I took several hundred photos on that trip, and though many of them wouldn't make very interesting paintings, I was sure that some of them would work. This scene is from our second day on the trail, after leaving Yosemite over Donohue Pass and descending a couple of miles to Rush Creek. We rested for an hour or two in this beautiful spot.

On our third day on the trail, we passed by Garnet Lake, with a great view of Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak. My son, Aaron, and his wife, Alicia, were accompanying me at this point, and I think that after a couple of days of hard work, they were finally fully appreciating what a beautiful place this was.

On the morning of our fourth day, we hiked along Shadow Lake and saw this scene. I don't usually like to do much masking, but I thought it was needed for this one, for the trees and sparkles. I wanted to show the early morning light with lots of contrast, and I think I did it pretty well.

I had already done a couple of paintings several years ago that fit into this series. At some point, I'd like to show them all together. I could put them on a website that I've been planning for years but haven't got around to yet. Two of the paintings that belong in this series are from May 2015 showing the Tuolumne River and Palisades Lakes.

June 2019

The last class project of the spring session was a turtle. Ron supplied two different photos, one black and white and one in color, and the idea was to combine them. By the end of the class, I thought it just needed a little more work, which I could do the following week. When that time came around, I decided that I was satisfied with it as it was, so I started a new painting instead.

One spring afternoon I went for a walk on the Ukraina Trail in the Hayward hills. It was a beautiful day, and as I passed a rocky hillside with a few poppies, I thought that it could be the subject of a painting some day, and I took a photo with my phone. In my class, while everyone else was still working on the turtle, I started this scene and finished it up later at home.