Mothers’ Day Bouquet Snippet

Ink & watercolor 5.5″x3.25″ (larger)

I’m back from my week-long workshop with Camille Przewodek in Petaluma. It was a powerful learning experience and an incredible opportunity two learn from two masters, Camille and her husband Dale Axelrod.  They studied for many years with Henry Hensche at the Cape Cod School of Art and are carrying on and expanding upon Hensche’s and Hawthorne’s work with color and light.

We painted in beautiful scenic locations from wetland marshes to the quaint village of Nicasio and the last day painted four models by the river that runs alongside Camille’s studio in charming and historic downtown Petaluma. We also did Hensche’s traditional colored block studies. All painting was done outdoors in bright sunlight and the weather couldn’t have been better.

I’ll write more about what I learned at the workshop when my paintings are dry and easier to handle, photograph and post.  In the meantime, here’s just a corner of the huge Mothers Day bouquet my son Cody surprised me with before we went to Brushstrokes Studio, a cute little pottery painting place in Berkeley. Cody and I decorated catfood bowls while his significant other designed a beautiful cup and daughter M painted a plate with a beach scene as a memorial for her grandmother who recently passed away. Then it was off to Pyramid Brewery for a yummy Mothers Day dinner accompanied by refreshing Pyramid Hefeweizen Ale served with a wedge of lemon.

Beauty Parlor Still Life

Ink and watercolor, 9×6 (larger)

This was my view while I was getting my hair cut on Friday. The beautiful peonies were an apology gift to my hairdresser from one of her clients. I don’t know what the client had done wrong but I thought the combination of the scissors, hairbrush and flowers made an interesting still life.

I’m going to be in a painting workshop all week with Camille Przewodek in Petaluma and may not have a chance to post until I return. It should be an exciting and intense week of painting. It’s also a vacation from work (whoopee) and I intend to enjoy every moment!

Worked late, missed train, got to draw

Larger

Once everyone left the office I could finally concentrate on a complicated project. By the time I finished and headed out it was nearly 8:00 p.m. I arrived at the BART station just as my train was pulling away and the flashing sign said it would be 20 minutes until the next one. I was exhausted, hungry and alone on the platform with nothing to do.

Within a few minutes, more late commuters began to arrive, sit down and kill time. I grabbed my sketchbook and the 20 minutes flew by. I drew the people above while waiting (felt pen added at home because I liked the negative space) and the folks below on the train ride home.

Larger

Firehoses on 5th Ave (Oakland)

Ink & watercolor (Larger)

Saturday I painted wtih the East Bay Plein Air Painters at the foot of 5th Avenue in Oakland. It’s an amazing little enclave of funky art studios, rusty old boats in a beat-up marina, and industrial buildings not far from Jack London Square.

I arrived very late, being unable to push myself this weekend to move quickly or arise early. I did this one little watercolor sketch sitting in the hot sun and took a lot of photos. I was fascinated by the many varieties of fire extinguisher equipment on all the old waterfront shacks (I’m easily amused, I suppose) and painted the oil below from one of the photos I took on Saturday, working from the image displayed on my computer screen.

Oil on panel, 8×6″ (Larger)

Here’s a photo from the 5th Avenue Marina, or, as it says in the photo, the “Oakland Riviera”:

Click image to enlarge and see the soldiers on the missile. I’ll be posting more of my photos and paintings from 5th Avenue soon.

Roses - Kerchoo!

Oil on panel, 14×11″ (larger)

These roses were making me sneeze. I’d set up the still life last Monday and then ran out of time on the painting and left it set up all week. When I finally got back to painting today, the studio smelled like like a perfume factory. That might be a pleasant experience if I wasn’t allergic and didn’t dislike strong scents, especially roses.

My goal for this painting was to be loose, work quickly, trying to get some of the freedom I experience with my line drawing and watercolor wash, while secondarily trying to pay attention to color and light.

Here are the steps along the way: (to see the steps, please click “Continue Reading” below)

Living Alone Means Never Losing Your Socks

Ink & watercolor (larger)

I was folding my laundry and admiring my collection of wonderful SmartWool socks when it struck me: I haven’t lost a single sock since I began living alone. When I was married with kids, socks disappeared on a regular basis and I had a drawerful of one-of-a-kind socks.

My son still comes over to do his laundry but even so, only one sock temporarily migrated but he brought it back (a year later at the insistence of his girlfriend), along with a pair of my undies that had somehow ended up in his laundry.

There’s pros and cons to living alone, of course. One downside is that if you do lose something, you have nobody to blame for it. Even now, when something goes missing, my first thought is that one of my sons must have taken it. But my only available scapegoats are my cats.

Fiona the calico does like to steal my SmartWool socks (maybe they smell a bit like animals, being made of wool?). I try to keep them away from her, since she tosses them around and wrestles with them and when I find them under the bed they are shredded and holey.

At least she doesn’t eat them. My friend Marean has a beautiful Sheltie who eats her socks whole, and has had to have stomach surgery to have a “sock-ectomy.”

Zen & First Spring Roses

Ink & watercolor, 9×6″ (larger)

When I picked these roses yesterday evening, they were heartbreakingly fresh, new and beautiful. I put them in a vase of water in the kitchen, planning to paint them today. This morning I found them laying on the counter where they’d obviously been without water too long and looked limp.

Either they jumped out of their vase or my cats had a hand (er… paw) in their escape. After a few hours back in water they plumped right back up and were a joy to draw. I only had about an hour and that was just enough time to make a happy ink and watercolor.

But why do I feel so sad seeing the beauty of my seven rose bushes and thick patch of irises all loaded with flowers? It’s as if I’m already mourning their demise, knowing how temporary their burst of color and vibrancy is before winter comes again.

Is it my enhanced awareness of the cycle of life and death as I approach one of those milestone birthdays this June? Or is that time seems to be moving so fast these days that I can picture the blooming season flying by like those time-lapse films where the flowers sprout, bloom, shrivel and die within moments.

Instead of feeling sad about their demise (and my own, for that matter), I need to remember the Buddhist teaching of being in the present moment, accepting that everything changes, everything dies; that desire and clinging cause suffering and that letting go relieves it.

So with that, I will allow my flowers to live and die as nature sees fit (as if I had any other choice!), and will enjoy them while they’re here. I’ll try to make the most of my own moments while I’m here too, with as much acceptance as I can. And maybe I’ll finally return to my Zen meditation practice which always brought me such joy and peace, and made all of life more vibrant.

Greatful vs Grateful & Terrific Tools: Toto Toilet

Ink & Kremer watercolors (larger)

I’m probably going to regret this post tomorrow so I apologize in advance if you find the image unsavory. It’s just that I was so tired tonight all I wanted to do was curl up with a good book and a big bowl of popcorn. To avoid the carb overload and squeeze in a little fun after a long work day, I tried to inspire myself to draw a bit. Looking for a subject, I wandered through the house and saw my shiny, excellent Toto toilet.

I highly value competence, good design, and well-made tools (from cars to combs, to clocks to computers–anything that helps manage my daily life I consider a tool). My Toto toilet is a terrific tool. It never has the problems my other WC does (which requires keeping a plunger nearby it at all times).

Here are some other tools I use and appreciate regularly for their great design and functionality: Soltek easel, iPhone, Toyota RAV 4, electric teakettle, Canon MP610 Scanner/Printer, TiVo, Canon Power Shot SD800IS camera, Photoshop, caller ID, Cheap Joes Golden Fleece brushes for watercolor and Robert Simmons Signet brushes for oil, ancient Eagle Creek backpack, my slippers, my bed…

Just writing this list makes me realize how lucky I am and how much I have to be grateful for, and this is just in the tools department, not the really important stuff of life, like friends, family and health.

That’s the great thing about drawing. I start out grumpy and tired and end up feeling grateful. So maybe I won’t regret this post after all.

One last thing: why is grateful spelled “grate” and not “great?” Grate is what you do with cheese or carrots. Great means good. Full of great makes more sense than full of grate.

OK, I had to look it up on Dictionary.com, another wonderful tool:

• Grate in grateful comes from the Latin, grātus, which means pleasing.
• Grate (framework of metal bars) comes from L crāt- (s. of crātis) which means wickerwork, hurdle or crate.
• Grate (as in grating cheese or grating on your nerves) originally comes from German, kratzen to scratch.
• GREAT comes from Groat, which was a silver coin of England, equal to four pennies, issued from 1279 to 1662 and which was larger than other coins in former use.

Oh the poor English learners! What a complex melting pot the English language is!

Infinite Color & Joy: Charting My Palette

11 colors x 11 colors = Joy! (Larger)

Richard Schmid said it best, when writing about his experience with doing these charts when he was an art student:

“When I finished I knew more about my paint than I had ever thought possible. It was an astonishing experience—imagine being taken into the kitchen of a great chef and shown everything he could do with flavors—that was what it was like for me! There was nothing tedious or boring about doing the charts; each was a revelation of the power that awaited me…”

I’ve been working on these charts for about two weeks and it has been an amazing experience, just as Schmid described. I’ve had moments of sheer delight at the unexpected appearance of a beautiful coppery color or a lovely mulberry. I was flown back in time to memories of dipping easter eggs in dye and seeing the colors emerge, and could almost smell the scent of the redwood forest with the appearance of sharp dark greens and rich deep reds.

The purpose of doing the charts is to see, understand, and remember how they behave. They also provide a wonderful resource to refer to again and again. I mixed 11 colors with each other and then lightened them in 5 steps, so that the first row is pure color and the last row is a tinted white. Adding more colors, more steps…the possibilities are endless! These could also be done with watercolor, using water instead of white paint.
(Please click “Continue Reading” for more…).

Hotel Mac, Pt. Richmond Plein Air

Ink & watercolor, 8×6″ (larger)

When we had all our paintings lined up to view after our plein air paint-out today, a very cheery homeless man passed by, examined everyone’s work, and announced that my oil painting (below) was the only one he would buy, repeating this several times. It wasn’t as high praise as one of the others in the group got: this is the third week in a row she’s sold her painting right off her easel!

I started the day with the oil painting below, trying to make use of some of the color mixing theory I’ve been studying. I was hungry to do some more detailed drawing too, so after the critique, I put away my painting gear and got out my sketchbook to do the ink and watercolor above.

Oil on panel, 8×10″ (larger)

Brick buildings are rare in California as they do not tend to survive earthquakes. But Hotel Mac, this three-story, red brick building in Pt. Richmond, a quaint, bayside community, was built in 1911, and must have weathered many quakes over the years.

Pt. Richmond is only a 15 minute drive from my house but I’d never been there before. I was pleasantly surprised by this little town on a hill. The street is lined with charming cafes and just over the hill is a huge, beautiful waterfront park (Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline) with gorgeous views of San Francisco across the water, a lagoon, and a railroad museum. I’m definitely going back there to paint again!

I just love to draw

Ink & watercolor in Strathmore Drawing 6×8″ sketchbook (larger)

A tall, overstuffed, nerdy guy sat down beside me on the commute home, opened his laptop and started watching a bloody horror movie. It was one of those movies with a creepy doll in it.

I turned away from him, tired from my first day back at work after being home with a cold,  and feeling disgusted by what I saw on his screen. But once I started drawing, I just felt happy.

I added watercolor this evening at home and that made me feel happy too. I really like this sketchbook paper for drawing with ink and then adding light watercolor washes. Although I usually prefer Cheap Joes inexpensive Golden Fleece watercolor brushes, tonight I grabbed an old friend: the first watercolor brush I ever bought: a Winsor Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable brush, with peeling paint, loose ferrule and no point.

I’m glad to be 2/3 over my cold, out of my pajamas, showered and dressed after a couple of days of being housebound with no energy to do any of the above.

Still Life for a Spring Cold

Brown Micron Pigma ink and watercolor in homemade sketchbook, 5×7″ (larger)

Need I say more?

I had a quiet, restful weekend, got enough sleep, didn’t stand out in the wind painting, and what do I get for it? A cold! That will teach me to slow down. Maybe if I just keep moving as fast as I usually do, always staying busy, the darn bugs don’t have a chance to take hold. The minute I slowed down they went to work.

Or maybe the cold was already taking hold and that’s why I chose quiet indoor painting this weekend?

With some Vitamin C, tea with lemon, and chicken soup, I’m usually able to kick a cold in 24 hours. That’s what I’m counting on this time.

Back to Basics - Color Vocabulary

Painting blocks to use in light and color-study still-life as explained in this previous post. (Newly gessoed panels drying in little rack behind the blocks).

After jumping head first (or was it feet first?) into oil painting, and then flailing about, trying to find my way, I realized it was time to go back to basics. Just as with writing or speaking, a basic vocabulary is essential to expressing oneself.

But I was trying speak “oils” using the vocabulary of color I’d learned with watercolor, assuming that Red is Red, whether it’s watercolor or oils. Unfortunately, I’m finding that’s like assuming if you can speak English you can speak French since they use the same alphabet.

Oil painting tests of different brands of color to choose my basic palette
(Click Images To Enlarge)

When I first started painting with watercolor, I made dozens of color charts, testing the various pigments to learn about their natures, alone and mixed with other colors. In watercolor this is really essential since there are so many characteristics that affect the flow of the paint: whether it charges into neighboring paint or resists it; whether it’s opaque or transparent; sedimentary (leaving little spots of sediment), staining or lifts easily, how it mixes with other colors and more.

I hadn’t done this with oil painting. But watching Camille Przedowek demonstrate a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by her huge “vocabulary” of color. She was quickly mixing up and painting with colors I couldn’t even name! I realized my oil painting color vocabulary is about that of a 4-year old from a foreign country.

(CLICK “Continue Reading” to read and see the rest…)

More Portrait Swaps: Andy (& Nel again)

ANDY by JANA
Ink & watercolor, Aquabee sketchbook, 12×9″ (larger)

Andy of “Drawn to Running” emailed me and invited me to do a portrait swap with him. I think he’s quite adorable and looks like someone with a very kind heart. I exaggerated in my sketch of him but had great fun doing the drawing, which was a relief after my struggles in the studio earlier this week.

Here’s his excellent portrait of me: an amazing likeness!:

JANA by ANDY

I’m still working on painting Nel and I’m determined to succeed to capture her image from one particular photo without making her look unattractive, which she most definitely is not! Here is another attempt (3rd of those I did today, the first two not worth posting!).

NEL #6
Ink & watercolor, Aquabee sketchbook, 12×9″ (larger)

Drawing in Sharpie is great fun. You have to move quickly or it starts to bleed; you can’t erase, just have to redraw the lines. I enjoy this kind of “take a chance and go” drawing and quick painting so much more than careful labored work these days.

Help! My House is Haunted! (A true mystery)

Ink and watercolor in Aquabee sketchbook (larger)

When my father was dying several years ago, I flew to Maine to help with his care and say goodbye. I arrived in late October, on a warm, fall day, and he was still eating and talking and trying to finish his last book, which I helped him edit those final days. When I left a week later on Halloween, winter had arrived with an icy blast and everything was covered in snow. He died two days later, on All Souls Day.

Before I left, the only thing of his I asked to take was his bird clock, pictured above. It chimed with the call of a different bird each hour from the wall above his writing desk. Even though the birds are now all faded to pale gray, I’ve had it on my wall ever since. Until this week, that is…when it apparently led to the haunting of my house.

I never was able to get the proper birds to chime on their designated hour. The two owl calls were supposed to chime at 6 and 12 but when the hands pointed to the Oriole it played the call of an owl, and when it pointed to an owl you might hear a blue bird or a cardinal. But I digress…back to the haunting.

A week ago, at exactly 4:00 a.m. I was awakened by the sound of the owl calling out from the clock: “Whooo whoo whoo. Whoo whoo whoo. Whoo whoo whoo.” The clock has a light sensor and is not supposed to chime in the dark, and had never done so before. I got out of bed and walked toward the clock in the dining room, but the sound stopped before I could reach it. The next day, groggy from disturbed sleep, I removed the batteries that control the bird calls.

But the next morning at exactly 4:00 a.m. the same thing happened again. I removed the last battery. The clock stopped and I put it on a shelf in another room.

The next morning at exactly 4:00 a.m.: “Whoo whoo whoo…etc.” I lay in bed wracking my brain trying to come up with what else could be making that sound but could think of nothing.

That day I put the clock in my garage, which is down a long driveway from the house. The next morning, 4:00 a.m., the owl was back, singing away from my dining room, without need of clock or batteries.

(Click “Continue Reading” below for the rest of the story.)

More for the portrait party

Watercolor, 11×7.5″ Nel #1 (larger)

Last week I posted my portraits of Nel and Rita for the Portrait Party blog’s birthday celebration. Today I worked on painting Nel from a different photo. Above is my first attempt.

Nel and Rita both did wonderful portraits of me for the Portrait Party. You can see Rita’s here and Nel’s here. They captured my likeness and a sense of my funny side and joyfulness.

Here’s today’s second version:

Watercolor, 11×7.5″ Nel #2 (larger)

You might notice that the drawing is exactly the same in both paintings. That’s because I did the drawing first and scanned it “just in case” I messed up. Then, when I wanted to do another painting, I printed the drawing out on a piece of watercolor paper and started again.

Watercolor, 11×7.5″ Nel #3 (larger)

I’m not happy with any of these, and I seem to have put my frustration on Nel’s face. Since that seems to be the general theme in my painting this week, maybe it’s time to move on to making color charts, always a good thing to do when the muse is on strike.

Am I Having Fun Yet? Uh, no.

Oil on panel, 9×12″ (reworked from original plein air) (larger)

Saturday was the first plein air paint-out of the season for the East Bay Plein Air Painters. We went to Old Borges Ranch, a charming historical old ranch with a blacksmith shop, old barns, farm animals, all surrounded by the brilliant green hills of springtime. It was very cloudy and I decided that what I wanted to focus on was trying to observe and paint the effect of the cloudy, cool, diffused light.

After wandering around trying to pick a spot, by the time I was ready to start painting I only had two hours left before our group critique. This is the same painting as above after two hours:

Oil on panel, 9×12″ (original plein air) (larger)

I probably should have left it alone and moved on. But I was frustrated with the way I seem to always be painting hills (I’m sick of painting hills!) and they always look flat. So after the critique, I went back and started working on the painting again, determined to figure out how to make the hills not look flat. I stood there painting for 2 more hours and although I made some discoveries about paint application and brush strokes, I hadn’t improved the painting at all (just the opposite).

What I’d planned to do after the paint-out at 1:00, was to take a walk on the beautiful trails and do some sketching of the interesting sights but it was too late when I finally gave up on the painting at 4:00 because I had a long drive home and had to get ready for a dinner party that evening.

Today, even though I tried to ignore it, the painting and my frustration about it continued to bug me. I finally decided to work on it some more until I either got it or killed it. I guess I did a little of both.

The truth is that today oil painting isn’t feeling like fun. I’m missing the watercolor sketchbooking and drawing for fun I did all the time before I took up oils. I’m jealous of all the people I see while I’m plein air painting who are taking a hike in pretty places instead of torturing themselves trying to paint them. I’m missing filling up my sketchbook with fun, wonky drawings and loose watercolors. I’m longing for working from still life set ups or photos where the light doesn’t change and where it’s not always a rush against time.

I also know that I’m persistent if nothing else, and that I’m not giving up the struggle. But it’s time to have more fun with my art. After all, I’m doing this for my own creative pleasure, and as much as I love learning, sometime a woman just needs to play, too.

Portrait Party Pics Part I

Nel in Sharpie and watercolor in Aquabee 12×9″ sketchbook (larger)

Two art blogger friends and I are swapping portraits for the Portrait Party’s Happy Birthday Party. You can see there pictures of me here on Nel’s blog and here on Rita’s Flickr page.
Anyone can join in the drawing fun. Just grab a friend and sketch each other; follow the directions here. To be included in the Happy Birthday Party contest, you need to submit your sketch to the Portrait Party by March 31.

RITA in Sharpie and watercolor in Aquabee 12×9″ sketchbook (larger)

My painting group met at my studio tonight and we finally caught up with each other after a month of way too much busyness to meet regularly. Lea finished illustrating her latest children’s book (which I think is going to become a classic) and shipped the last of the paintings off to her publisher. Susie shared some beautiful watercolors from her trip to Hawaii. Sharon was working on an abstract watercolor and while she painted, Judith surreptitiously sketched her. To get even, Sharon did a quick watercolor of Judith.

Then we uploaded their portrait swaps (below) to the Portrait Party. On the left is Judith’s sketch of Sharon. Sharon’s quick watercolor of Judith is on the right. They both captured each other’s essences in a powerful way.

(click images to enlarge)

It’s been a while since I’ve sketched with those very unforgiving Sharpies and it was fun and somehow liberating to just start drawing and see where I ended up and then loosely add watercolor. I was working from photos I was sent by N. and R. I’ve never met either of them in person but I find it’s often easier drawing someone I don’t know intimately. One of the photos N. sent me was so intriguing that I plan to attempt a more serious portrait from that image later.

Alpine Lake, Mt. Tam: Beautiful place, Ugh!ly paintings

It couldn’t have been a more perfect day, weather-wise, or a more beautiful site. Maybe it was the beauty and grandeur of the location that made it so hard to get a decent painting. Four of us met this morning on Mt. Tamalpais to paint and stayed until 6:00 p.m But despite the perfect conditions, nobody had a good painting day. Peggy threatened to throw her easel in the lake and take up singing instead of painting.

I’m posting the bad paintings because a reader asked me to show the ones I call “scrapers” before I trash them or scrape the paint off to reuse the panel. On my easel above, was the first layer–the blocking in–of painting #1, in which I “pushed” (exaggerated) the intensity of the colors I was seeing, knowing it’s easier to tone them down than brighten them in oil painting.

I liked the initial bright colors but wasn’t successful in taking it to the next stage, as you’ll see from the picture below. This was where I left off when I gave up after the sun moved and the light and shadows changed and I was just making a mess.

And this one (below) was even worse! The drawing is wrong and the silly, carrot colored-rabbit foot shaped hills on the left kept growing without my noticing and I lost all my darks. The third painting was so terrible I scraped it off on site.

Although I feel like I’ve taken a couple of steps backwards today, I will just assume that means that I’m going to have a big leap forwards soon. My paintings were complete rubbish but I was happy just being there. I found pleasure in small things: mixing a good color, the fresh paint thinner in my brush washer can, excellent company and no bugs, rain or wind so it was safe to use my umbrella without worrying about the wind pulling it (and my easel) over.

My only regret was not taking a hike like all the other people strolling by us. I felt envious of them when I heard them talking about the nearby waterfall and the wonderful trails.

I’m going to start taking a lunch time hike when I paint in beautiful locations. I think it will be good for my painting, my mind, and my butt, which wouldn’t fit into my painting jeans this morning! Must have been all the medicinal chocolate I ate the past few weeks to calm my stress at the day job.

Time to Reflect Without TV

Ink in Moleskine (Larger)

This is a pocket-sized, hand-carved, portable altar. From the outside, when it’s closed, it appears to be two hands in prayer (see below). When you open it there are two serene Buddhas in meditation. (Unfortunately in my drawing they look less than serene.)

(Larger)

I watched no TV today and was astonished by how much more time I had, and everything I was able to fit into the day. Instead of watching TV while I ate my meals I read the art magazines I subscribe to but had barely glanced at. As soon as a meal was done I was up and off to something else instead of sitting and finishing watching a TV show.

After lunch, instead of having my afternoon cup of coffee in front of the TV, I sat on my sunny back porch and reflected on this and that, watching my baby hydrangeas grow. That’s when it struck me how little time I’ve been spending with my mind free to wander and ponder.

When I was a kid I loved to lay on my back in the grass and watch the clouds drift by, seeing different creatures in them. As an adult, I had a Zen meditation practice that got squeezed out of my schedule a few years ago. Somehow TV had gradually taken the place of that kind of open, meditative time. Now, without TV, it feels like there’s time for real relaxation and getting things done.

Today I finally cleaned up the junk I’d piled on the counter in the studio kitchen months ago and had been ignoring. This evening, when I gathered up the sketchbooks that had piled up on my drawing table, I discovered a Moleskine with only two blank pages left. Today’s sketch is of one of the items that needed putting away from the kitchen. Now I’ve finished the kitchen and the sketchbook and a really great day.

Life: NOT as Seen on TV

Ink & watercolor (Larger)

“Life is what passes you by while you’re watching TV.” I used to have a little sign on my TV with those words, but back then it was a reminder to my kids, not to me. Now I need it for me.

I was chatting with my friend Lin [View from the Oak] about our struggles to find time for everything. Lin manages to paint or sketch every day, post it on her illustrious blog AND leave wonderfully encouraging comments on countless other blogs, all while working a grueling schedule and making time for her husband, offspring and grandbabies.

It occurred to me later that day: I bet Lin doesn’t watch TV! It turns out I was right. Other than the art videos she watches while on her treadmill, she rarely watches TV. She said that sketching IS her TV, her way to relax.

I used to be like that too but somehow, over time, TV has insidiously infiltrated my life. I turned to it as a way to relax when my brain was tired from thinking hard all day at work. But it puts me in a stupor so I just watch another show instead of doing something more satisfying (or just going to bed when what I really need is sleep).

Now it’s time to pull the plug! I may even cancel my cable and TiVo subscriptions and go cold turkey for a while. I bet that not only will I gain time and save money (on cable and TiVo bills), I might even lose a couple extra pounds, since watching TV often leads to snacking on empty calories while burning none!

Have you successfully quit TV? If you have any tips, I’d love to hear them!

Plein Air “Grunts” with No Green for St. Patricks Day

Oil on panel, 12″x16″,  (larger)

In Camille’s class today we painted at Helen Putnam Regional Park in Petaluma. Our instructions were to paint four small, very quick (about 20 minutes) starts (sort of like rough drafts in oils) on one 12×16″ panel. If I understood correctly, we were to try to capture the color temperature of a bright sunny day, the relationships between the hues and values, and the relationships between the distant, mid and close up values and colors. And all of this without using green to paint the extremely bright and vibrant lime green hills.

I’m at the point now with this work where I feel like I’ve been living in a foreign country long enough (the land of plein air oil painting) that some of the words the natives (my teachers) speak are starting to be understandable. I still can only respond with grunts (see above “painting,” — definitely no more than a few grunts!) but I kind of get what my teachers are saying.
I’m starting to see the vivid colors in nature beyond the local colors (green tree, red apple). And I’m maybe starting to understand why you might paint a sky a pale yellow before over-painting it with very light blue, or a green hill orange first because it’s in the bright sun, and then modify that orange with something that, when compared to the color next to it, reads as green.

Vegetable Medley to Celebrate: Taxes Done!

Gouache on hot-pressed Arches paper, 7×5” (larger)

To celebrate E-filing my taxes tonight I wanted to paint something bright, cheery (and low calorie to make up for all the chocolate I ate while preparing the return). For years I fueled my tax preparation with a big bag of Mother’s Iced Circus Cookies that I stuck in the freezer and munched on until my taxes were done. I needed all that sugar to be able to do the math, understand the forms, and reward myself for doing such an unpleasant task.

This year I skipped the toxic cookies (loaded with artificial color, flavor and hydrogenated fats but oh so yummy)…and bought organic, fair trade chocolate at my neighborhood health food store, El Cerrito Natural. I waited a week to let the tax returns “simmer on the back burner” to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. Then tonight I reviewed everything and clicked “Submit.”

It’s much easier to do taxes these days: Turbotax does the math and I just have to gather and enter all the information. But I still experience all the same old fear and loathing plus resentment at where my tax money goes. But it’s done for another year! Woohoo!

Red Onion, Wrench & Lighting Still Lifes

Oil on panel, 8×6″ (larger)

My favorite part of this quick oil sketch are the little flag or wing-like thingees on the top of the onion. I had a variety of problems with this painting, some of which I solved and some I didn’t.

I still haven’t gotten still life lighting worked out. I was about to build a set up like I saw on Carole Marine’s blog here and here, but discovered that while the pvc pipe she used is very inexpensive, the fittings are not. It was going to cost around $50 for the fittings and pipe so I decided to go back to using my 3-sided cardboard box still life “stage.” But my overhead full-spectrum fluorescent lights are right next to the table beside my easel, so it’s hard to block out the overhead light to prevent light sources coming from different directions.

I’ve also been experimenting with different kinds of light bulbs to direct at the still life, from color balanced fluorescents and incandescents to halogen. I even bought some sheets of colored photographic “gels” to use as filters on the lights to create a warm or cool light. So far nothing has worked as well as painting outdoors;  Mother Nature is the best.But in my neighborhood near the San Francisco Bay where it’s often foggy and windy and the light changes constantly, outdoor still life painting can be frustrating.

If you have any tips on lighting still lifes, I’d be most grateful to hear about them!

Mustard Grass Meadow, Albany CA

Oil on panel plein air (mostly), 12×9″ (Larger)

After working at my “day job” most of Monday, a day I usually don’t work, I grabbed my painting gear and headed to this field covered in brilliant mustard grass. I’d driven by the field the day before and was desperate to paint it. By then it was about 4:30 and the sun, which had been shining brightly all day, had disappeared behind clouds on its way down. A chilly, foggy breeze blew in from the nearby Bay but the mustard grass was still glowing.

I set up in the parking lot of the Ocean View Elementary School in Albany, looking through a chainlink fence at the field. It is part of U.C. Berkeley’s Gill Tract, a 14-acre agriculture research field owned by the university. Until recently the field was a pine forest, but the university just cut down all 314 Monterey Pines because they were infected with pitch canker and were deemed hazardous.

Several children who were being picked up from after-school activities dragged their moms over to see what I was doing. One little boy told me that my trees looked “so realistic!” He made my day because I’d been thinking they were awful. Another little girl said she liked to paint too. I asked her what she liked to paint with (thinking watercolor? acrylic?) and she said, “purple….and orange….and yellow…you know, colors!” acting like I was really dumb to be asking that question.

With the light fading fast I packed up and went home after about an hour and a half. Tonight, with the workweek finally over I returned to the painting. From memory I made a few adjustments, lightening the hills a bit, adding more dimension to the field and trying to do a little something with the trees, which maybe I should have just left alone since they looked better before like the little boy said.