Cows at the laguna

For one of my first paintings of the summer, I went to the laguna in Sebastopol...on that day there were cows grazing there, something I had never seen before. I like landscapes with cows in them, though I need a lot more practice. 

To Practice Art

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make the soul grow. So do it."   ---Kurt Vonnegut

Santa Cruz Vista

This past week, I had the opportunity to go on a field trip to Santa Cruz with the Honor Society students from my school. I took my pochade box with me, and (in between correcting essays on Anne Frank) sat on the wharf next to the beach boardwalk and painted this view. It was wonderfully relaxing...the sun was bright, and there were four or five seals frolicking in the water in front of me. It was the first time I had used the pochade box to paint in a very public spot. It worked beautifully; the box is small enough to be pretty discreet. A few people came up to me, but they were friendly, so it was fine.

Cemetery Painting

This 5" x 7" study was painted very quickly because it was extremely hot that day and I was with my dog, who is old and can't tolerate the heat for much time. I painted it at the cemetery on Green Valley Road in Sebastopol. I love cemeteries for their peacefulness, and this one is especially lovely for its small size and beautiful view. Before I started my painting, I was sitting on a bench taking in the view. I noticed a handmade wooden box attached to a wooden post next to the bench. Inside the box, I found a small notebook and a pen. Inside the notebook was written, "Welcome, all! This notebook is lovingly dedicated to the memory of ______. Please feel free to leave a note." Family members of ______ had left notes, photos, and cards over a long period of time. Additionally, people who had never known the deceased gentleman but were visiting the cemetery (like me) had left their thoughts about a wide variety of topics. Interesting idea.
I still need to work on the foreground of this painting. I'm not happy with the grass, and the tree needs more branches... 

Painting a Pug

This is Tuffy. He belongs to my friends Nancy & Angie. He lives with them, as well as four cats. His favorite toy is "Devil Guy," which you see in his mouth. As you may imagine, I chuckled to myself the entire time I was working on this painting!

Learning to be astonished

From "Messenger" by Mary Oliver:


"Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? 
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me 
     keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,


which is mostly standing still and learning to be
     astonished...."

Pelicans and Painting

Yesterday, I had the day off. I needed to go to Sebastopol to run errands, so I took my pochade box with me so I could paint a view of the laguna on my way to town. It was beautiful, as usual. What made it extra spectacular was a group of American White Pelicans that landed in the laguna while I was painting. At the moment they landed, I was looking at my painting and did not see them. I heard an impressive noise (as they swept their large beaks through the water) and looked up to see a group of birds such as I'd never seen before. At first I thought I was seeing swans; then I noticed their huge beaks. I was trying to figure out what I was seeing when a woman walked over to take a photo. She told me what they were and said they usually were found at the other end of the laguna. She also told me that they have an 8-foot wing span. We both stood watching them, and then they took off. They circled up slowly in ever widening circles; underneath their wings is a distinctive black pattern (on top they are pure, bright white). It was truly a magical experience to see them.

Reworked Painting

This is the reworked version of one of the paintings I did (and posted earlier) during my Spring Break vacation. I altered the colors to increase value contrast, and I'm much happier with this version! I'm going to give this painting to my friend Geri, who is a fabulous chef, and who invites my wife and I to her home twice a year (at Thanksgiving and Easter) for an amazing feast. So....a trade....my art for her art!

What is important to an artist

Poet Mary Oliver, from her book Our World, on her life with photographer Molly Malone Cook:
"In some consideration of my writings, a reviewer once surmised that I must have a private income of some substance, since all I ever seemed to do (in my poems) was wander around Provincetown's woods and its dunes and its long beaches. It was a silly surmise. Looking at the world was one of the important parts of my life, and so that is what I did. It was as simple as that. Poets, if they ever make a living from their writings, do not do so when they are first beginning to publish, and this was years ago. We did not, as I have said before, have much income. We had love and work and play instead."

On the easel today....

Still have a ways to go on this painting....colors and values need adjusting, and the grass & sky need work. Painted from a photo I took years ago of the Russian River under stormy skies. The river did look an interesting aqua color on that day. 

Final paintings of Spring Break

Rain will start tomorrow, so today was my final painting excursion of this vacation week. The sky was full of perfect clouds today. The painting on top was done on Green Valley Road in Sebastopol; the other painting was done overlooking the Laguna down the road from Analy High School. Yesterday, I began using a different, lighter yellow: cadmium yellow light, as recommended by artist Kevin Macpherson for a limited palette. For both these paintings, I used only 4 colors---the cadmium yellow light, along with ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, and titanium white. It makes the whole process simpler to use so few colors, without really limiting any color possibilities for the paintings, since so many colors can be mixed from those four. 

Paying Attention

Invitation


Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of you busy


and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles


for a musical battle,
to see who can sing 
the highest note,
or the lowest,


or the most expressive of mirth,
of the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air


as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine


and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude---
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing


just to be alive 
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.
I beg of you,


do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.


It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.


                                  by Mary Oliver

Dramatic skies

Yesterday, the skies were unbelievably beautiful and dramatic. As I drove out of Guerneville to run errands in nearby towns, it seemed to me incredible that this show in the sky--completely unpredictable from day to day--is available to us earthlings every day. I am far from capturing even a bit of its splendor, but it is fun to try. The first painting I did (top) was painted from the parking lot of Martinelli Winery on River Road. The second painting was painted down the road from Analy High School in Sebastopol, looking out over the laguna. My practice this week, of completing as many small paintings en plein air as possible, has certainly been humbling. I will keep at it, with the conviction that with time and practice, improvement will come....right?

From Art and Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland

"Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending. The risks are obvious: you may never get to the end of the sentence at all---or having gotten there, you may not have said anything."


Yep. (sigh)

Patience

Painted in the Alexander Valley. A disappointment. Will try again today.

About ART and also LIFE....

"The lesson here is simply that courting approval, even that of peers, puts a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts---namely, whether or not you're making progress in your work. They're in a good position to comment on how they're moved (or challenged or entertained) by the finished product, but have little knowledge or interest in your process....the only pure communication is between you and your work."
                                   --from Art and Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland

Spring Break painting

Painted on Wohler Road; acrylic on gessoboard. I have used gessoboard only a few times, but I like its smooth surface much more than canvas. It's more expensive, so I want to experiment with having boards cut at a hardware store & applying coats of gesso myself to save money. Used the actual palette of my pochade box as a palette for the first time. I had thought it would be too small, so I was putting down foil and just disposing of a layer whenever I needed new space. I found today, however, that since my paintings are so small, I don't need much space to mix paint, so it worked great!

Honore de Balzac said....

"Passion is universal humanity. Without it, religion, history, romance and art would be useless."

From Art and Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland

"If you think good work is somehow synonymous with perfect work, you are headed for big trouble. Art is human; error is human; ergo, art is error. Inevitably, your work (like, uh, the preceding syllogism....) will be flawed. Why? Because you're a human being, and only human beings, warts and all, make art. Without warts, it is not clear what you would be, but clearly you wouldn't be one of us."

Spring Break painting #1

Yesterday, I went out in the rain to paint from my car using my new pochade box. The setup worked great. This is a 5" by 7" painting of an old church in Guerneville. It appears to be someone's home these days. The blue sky is made up; the actual sky was pale, pale gray but I thought it needed to stand out more from the building. There were cars parked in front along the street; I just painted greenery instead. Lots of the magenta underpainting shows through, but I don't mind it in this little sketch. It was great to be relaxed and painting! 

Monet said....

"When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you: a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think, 'Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow,' and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you."

New Pochade Box!

I am excited to use my new Guerilla Painter pochade box! They can be purchased in a multitude of sizes and configurations; I chose their smallest model (called a "pocket box"). The lid holds two 5" x 7" canvases and protects them while they dry. In the box is storage room, and the sliding piece functions as a palette. Thus, it is a self-contained mini studio, perfect for painting en plein air. I can add a gadget to the bottom that will allow me to attach it to my camera tripod; haven't done that yet. My reason for choosing such a small size is that I want to take it with me when I travel, so I want it to be as easy to carry as possible. I think painting on the 5" x 7" canvases will be good for me as I want to practice capturing the light in landscapes more quickly. This week is my Spring Break and my goal is to paint a lot. Since rain is forecast almost every day, this means I'll probably be painting from my car. The wild mustard is blooming here; I hope this means that even on the rainy days there will be some interesting color around.

Learning Color

I am creating a sketchbook that is dedicated to nothing but color studies. This page is a study of all the greens that can be created from the tubes of acrylic paint I take with me to paint en plein air. I have needed to do more of these studies for some time but I keep putting it off because I find them tedious. My plan for the immediate future is to do another page of greens with a more limited selection of just 1 blue and 1 yellow. Then, I want to do pages dedicated to oranges, purples, grays and browns. Since I know that I am not patient about doing these, I will just work on perhaps half a page at a time. Maybe that way I won't abandon the project as I have in the past.

Why I paint....

Second Version

The very first photo posted on this blog was my first attempt at painting this scene (from a photo of Bear Paw Vineyard in Sonoma County). I am much happier with this version. You can't tell from the photo posted here, but this version has quite a bit more texture, as well as more depth of color. The tree on the left, for example, has several shades of green, as well as red, yellow and purple. Ditto the shadow on the right. This is something I always try to achieve, but rarely manage. I am still at a place on my journey where, when this happens, it feels a bit like a happy accident. Perhaps it will always feel that way....who knows? I feel it is the journey of a lifetime.