My latest ArtId listing is a monochromatic painting of a river, riparian forest, and rising moon emerging from a cloud bank is all in shades of blue. I once did a river scene with a swan floating in a wide pool and distant castle turrets above dense forest growth entirely in greens. It sold at its first showing, a small works competition.

These pieces are great lessons in establishing values within a painting, for that is the only tool you have to keep the forms from getting lost in one another and giving form to the objects in your painting. In watercolor the amount of water used and the number of washes are the control for the values. The unique characteristics of the yupo surface, it's lack of absorbency, helped keep the darks stronger in this piece, and the water result was great for the river, clouds, and the dreamly feel of a night time scene.

I was recently asked to do a show at the Lodi Wine and Visitors Center. I decided to feature floral and still life works, and I will be hanging the show later this week. As I worked to assemble an appropriate collection which would include a good number of pieces not yet shown in Lodi, I focused on a small (8" by 10") acrylic which I painted plien air in my backyard on a breezy March day. I wrote about it in my ArtId blog right after I painted it.

Now that it was going to go out into the world and be seen, I decided it needed to go from the look of an acrylic sketch to a painting with some punch. I did some outlining in sap green and then worked with sap green, Naples yellow, and lemon for more variety and a feeling of more definition in the unfocused background while still keeping it abstract.

This is a set of sketches I made last weekend at the UC Santa Cruz arboretum. These are in pencil and watercolor, done in a watercolorist's sketchbook, wire bound, watercolor paper, hard cover, 10" X 7" pages. It fits easily into a backpack with drawing tools,a small watercolor palette, and a tube of brushes with room left over for lunch, camera, binoculars, and a field book.

I can't say enough good things about carrying some sort of sketchbook all the time--it is a chance to capture colors, atmospherics, and shadow in a way that your camera won't; it's practice in stolen moments in your busy day, it passes time when yu have to wait. In fact, yesterday my son and I both went to an Indian Rancheria Casino about an hour's drive from home to take the Jeopardy pretest and arrived two hours ahead of schedule to make sure we were among the 1,000 who could enter. I had drawing materials as well as a novel with me, and it was sketching that particularly helped the time pass in the hot, outdoor setting. And don't you love those positives from onlookers! (As for the Jeopardy testing, I easily passed the pretest, but did not get beyond the second round today.
The whole process was fun and worth doing again.)

Creamy white callas reflect the purples and greens of the sweet-scented lilacs and leaves below and around them. Stems in the clear galss vase show through in greens and yellows. A blue black background gives the still life punch. The white stand beneath the vase is alive with reflected color. This work is painted in oils on canvas board.

What I like most about this painting is my vase in which the water reflects the darkness of the wall and the stems are suggested within the optic distortion of rounded and slightly lumpy glass. The wall behind is vase was actually a rather ugly mid-tone blue, which reflected fairly darkly in the glass. The color was a poor compliment to the lilacs, and I felt darkening it made the painting much more interesting. There is such pleasure in seeing and painting reflected light. One of the joys of painting is the degree to which it helps one really see the world around us.

I happened upon The International Society of Acrylic Painters 11th Annual International Exhibition at the Santa Cruz Art League this past weekend. The sixty works chosen to represent the best in acrylics were quite wonderful. You can find out more about this exhibit and view slides of selected work at International Society of Acrylic Painters-USA

Of course I checked to see how international the show really is--after all the World Series and the Miss Universe contests both greatly exaggerate their field of competition. In this case most exhibitors were from the US with Norther Ireland also in the field. I do not know the full geographical range of entrants.

The single fact that most struck me as I looked at these works was what can be called integrity in the use of materials. These were clearly acrylics, not acrylics masquerading as other media, which they can do. On would expect, of course, that in selecting the best works in a show devoted to a specific medium the weight of judgment would come down on the side of works that showcased its unique qualities. That certainly happened in this show.

The image I included with this blog post is simply a prototypical Santa Cruz figure--the surfer whose long experience shows in his graying hair and in the way he rules the waves. And what media would this photo which I snapped Friday inspire me to?

On a warm summer night a young girl walks toward the surf of a quiet beach. Distant starts twinkle overhead, as the moonlight touches her shoulder and and a balmy breeze lifts her moonlit hair.Moonlight, too, gives form to the headlines off to the left. A marine layer, which could chill down the beach with fog, remains well out to sea.

This 5" by 7" drawing is scratched into india ink which coats Claybord brand scratchboard. It is presented in an 11" by 14" white mat.

I enjoy the shift in thinking necessary to "draw" in reverse, taking the ink out with the scratch tools. When drawing with pen or pencil, I occasionally let my hand wander where it will and build a coherent drawing from that. Not so with scratch. Every nick in the surface is permanent and better have its purpose. The line between a drawing that works and a disaster which loses its details is a fine one.

I am happy with this little gem--it is the sort of art which can carry me away in imagination to an idyllic place when surroundings are physically or emotionally dreary.

I completed a small painting of the "Fire Moon" yesterday, this is the moon that has been hanging over the Great Central Valley of California this week, gradually waxing fuller and always reddened by the smoke in the skies. There have been mornings when a dimmed sun rose an angry red and stayed that way farther above the horizon than ought to be expected, too.

Late Thursday evening, on the edge of Friday morning, as the clock moved toward the midnight hour, it was framed by my bedroom window. There's a painting there, I thought, at last inspired by something in this smoke hazed period. I chose watercolor, where its transparency could well represent the layers of haze and various shades could blend into the grays. The moon itself I painted in a mix of transparent watercolor and gouache to avoid having it look to luminescent. I avoided hard edges on everything is the painting because I did wanted to emphasize the absence of clarity of light.

The ultimate painting for these fires would be of the heroes of the fire lines. The fire fighters who have been on one fire or another in rugged landscapes for a month or longer and continue to perform. That one is for someone else who has been at the heart of this thing, instead of out here on the edges, to paint.

Vines loaded with yellow berries climb a rock wall on a fall day. Dominate colors are pinks, yellow, and green. Shadows give the work dimension. This is the sort of delightful scene that will give one reason to pause during a walk and drink in the details of shape, texture, and color.

This painting represents a detail at California's the Valley of the Moon's Jack London State Park on the former estate of the well-known author of Call of the Wild and a host of other books. I could have painted the ruins of Wolf House the dream home he started to build but never lived in. It burned, and London died at a rather young age before it was completed. HIs widow Charmain did not complete it, choosing instead to live in a smaller stone house on the property which today is a museum housing his works, objects from their extensive travels, and other items of interest to those interested in literary history.

This stone fence wall is on the grounds, and I liked the pink tones of the stone and the intense color of the flora growing against it.

As I write of this memory of a bright clear day, I'm looking out again at skies gray with smoke. Those conditions have been back this week and temperatures have been well over 100 degrees. The only break I've had from it was a day in Santa Cruz where there was some graying of the sky from the Big Sur fire, but the air felt crisp and clean. Some lovely fog rolled in and it was a pleasure to chill down.

Yesterday the light was good again. For the first time in almost a week I painted, working on this coastal scene which is still far from complete. Colors look right again. They did not in the dim red-gray filter of smoke. (my last blog posting dealt with the effects of the California fires). The edges of the horizon are still marked by smoke from the various fires but a delta breeze moving through the pass where rivers flow into the San Francisco Bay has pushed much of the particulate matter away from my area. while out shopping a short while ago, I looked up and the sky was a blue bowl with a bright white egret flying directly overhead. Oh, joy!

With still some thousand forest fires burning, you can be sure there are many people still under a pall of smoke or at personal hazard. I have not forgotten that.

But I'm also thinking how important light is to our sense of well being. It is essential to us as artists, of course. But there are enough people who suffer depression in latitudes with long dark winters that light therapies have been developed.

This drawing in black and white is a modified contour drawing all completed in a single line through to the signature. It is an introspective view of a short haired woman wearing a vee-necked shirt and is a far distance from photo-realism.

I chose to add this portrait my artid page today because it feels a bit like the world around me. Black and white--but unlike the protrait, mostly gray. Notice the big eyes? They have been widened to see the horizon so often that they may be stuck in the mode seen here, which actually came from looking up into the mirror as I drew on a flat surface. Or maybe I'm in perpetural squint from the eyestrain. While I'm not endangered by any fire by a long shot, smoke from the northern California fires has darkened the skies and make the distances look foggy for five days now. Stinging eyes, loss of appetite, mild headaches, and occasional coughing make an appearance from time to time--and I'm nowhere near in the worst areas. I also don't have asthma or any other respiratory diseases--just moderate hay fever type allergies.

Our daughter and son-in-law moved from Sacramento to Santa Cruz a couple of months ago. This is a great joy to me. She has asthma and would be in worse conditions than we are if she was in her old home. Now she has sea coast air.

The cats and dogs around us are laying low.

This has not been a productive art week. Just taking care of the necessities of life use up all my ambition. Even after viewing the Pastel Society of the West Coast's fabulous show at the Haggin Museum in Stockton last Friday, I haven't felt inspired. What a whine!! Blue skies will return one day, but as my 85 year old mother said, "I've never seen it like this here before, and I've been around a long time."

I wish I had taken a before photo of this still life. I painted with a group last Tuesday. We were working from a still life set up which included a lemon, a rose, and a cluster of rose leaves against black velvet and white linen. Most of them worked on a vertical plane, but I decided to do a horizontal composition. I did not want to center the two major items in the still life, but in my effort to get them off-center, I wound up with the center of my white rose creating a bull's eye effect at the middle of the painting. The area to the right of it was only draperies.

I liked the form of the rose, and I liked the lemon with its rich yellows, its greenish low-lights and the bright white highlight. But I knew I needed to kill the effect of all that white around circular darks at the center of this acrylic. After two days of scowling at it, I painted gray all over the rose, rubbing it back out but leaving a dulling film. Then I added the yellow rose and built up my purple folds in the black fabric a bit. With that and the help on more better shadows under the objects, I had pushed the white rose back and softened its appearance. By this time I had something I was willing to sign my name to.

All in all I enjoyed solving the problems presented by this little 8×10 still life.

A comorant watches the surf from a rock near shore, while the eye can just make out a seal on a more distant rock formation. Further out at sea a fishing boat and sailing craft ply the waters. In the far distant a cape of land juts out and a fog bank lies ont the far horizon. Blues, grays, and browns dominate. The image is 11" by 14" and will be shipped matted for a 16" by 20" frame.

This is one of those paintings I've had around for a while because I like the way the sea fades from that deep blue into the fog, I like the limited palette, and it reminds me of one of my favorite stretches of coastline. The interaction of sea and shore, the way light plays in the ever varying transitions from clear, bright sun to fog or blustery storm, is always a source of inspiration for painting or poetry. This is very near the cliffs and churning seas that inspired the poetry of Robinson Jeffers from his Carmel home. He spoke of this same Pacific Ocean in "The Eye" thus--

"Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland
plunging like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke

Into pale sea--look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet" If you haven't read Jeffers and you have an interest in the great eternal dialog concerning whild and rugged places which is found in the world's literature and art, check him out.

Friday evening was our community Art Hop, a monthly event where art is shown in about 10 locations in the small city of Lodi. My art group was featured at the prime spot Hutchins Street Square (pictured here) as well as in our own gallery. This was a nice double representation in which the city's arts arm worked with us to help make the public aware of our new gallery. We had one piece each at Hutchins St Sq. Nice evening, lots of good art talk, and not bad turn out for early June.
I was less happy Saturday morning when I was filling an empty staffing spot at the gallery because no one else had taken it--maybe a little too grumpily aware that I do more than a fair share! Message on phone on arrival from someone who wants to buy one of the pieces that are hanging at Hutchins St. Call him. Turns out it's mine, a watercolor of a Victorian, that he finds "quite the best thing in the show". Better still when he comes to the art center gallery to pay, he commissions me to paint an historic building that I am going to love doing! By then I'm sort of having a "virtue is its own reward" feeling about doing extra staffing!

Nice art news of a different nature Sunday when we attend a little 8th grade graduation party for my niece Caroline, a talented young artist. She is going to be attending a high school with a strong arts program and has been approved for advanced art class as a freshman.

I was in Santa Cruz earlier this week, my daughter’s new home so doubtless my new most common place on the coast to visit, edging out Fort Bragg/Mendocino and Cambria CA. I woke up early and set out to find a cup of espresso and a fresh baked scone or muffin to accompany me on a walk to the beach. The ever present small sketch book was in the "healthy back" bag slung over my shoulder. I sketched this sitting on a bench above Sea Bright Beach. It was a pleasant spot to watch the day begin, and a big long-haired cat twined around my ankles and curled up on the bench behind me as I drew. The early morning sun made nice highlights on the lighthouse and rocks. The distance was obscured by a marine layer a mile or so off shore. I may use this as a model for a small painting. Whether I do or not, creating it was a enjoyable experience.

A sail boat at Huntington Lake rests in dock near summer's end in the High Sierra mountains of California. The lake is famous for its July sailboat regatta, but soon there will be frost on the ground in the mornings and the boats will be hauled away to dry dock or milder climates. The work was drawn in ink and the lines are an important part of the image. Watercolor brings up the brilliant blues of the craft and the water, the green of the pines and the brown deck planking. Image is 11×14 in a 16" by 20" double mat.

I love to sit out and draw/paint this kind of thing, especially when wind and sun dry watercolor quickly. The evaporation time under such conditions seems to increase at elevation. Drawing plus quick, wet work with the brush helps avoid edges where they are not wanted, the great peril of not keeping watercolors wet enough. Its a pleasure to do works in studio with a bead of water making its path down the page and building multiple glazes. It is also frustrating if you don't "go with the flow" when you cannot control atmospheric conditions!