Original pastel shows three tangerines next to a celadon vase with an abstract water lily leaf pattern in blue. A blue silk cloth lies under these objects and a peach colored wall is seen behind them. This small pastel is on 5" × 7" Ampersand pastel board, and will be shipped in its 8" × 10" frame.

I love working with the toothy Ampersand pastel board. It hangs on to the pastels extremely well.

Notice the repeated shapes and colors accompanied by eye pleasing variation. The purple shadows and the fruit break the blue into a larger and a smaller segment, and the vase breaks the larger segment for three blue shapes. The three rounds of fruit are each smaller and paler moving back on the picture plane. The vase, drawn from one of my favorites, has a pattern that looks like water lily pads in varying shapes and sizes.

At the top of an off shore rock pelicans gather, and a lone comorant stands sentinel at the left end of the formation. Mists swirl in the blue sky behind them. The rock itself is a rugged blend of light and shadow. This original painting is in acrylic on stretched canvas.

Without a drop of water in sight, this painting speaks of the sea. Part of it is the light bouncing white off the top of the rocks and reflecting back in the fog swirling in the sky. We identify pelicans and cormorants with the sea even though they can be found along in shore lakes at certain times of the year. The birds also speak of the ocean breeze, either facing directly i to it or hunkered down against it as several of the pelicans are. I love taking a corner of a great stone formation along the coast and trying to create the whole feeling from just a small portion of the scene.

Having heard once to many times "oh, you don't have that one anymore" spoken in a disappointed voice, it seemed right to make "Sunset Beach Ride" available as a reproduction. This scene does capture that perfect moment of light that speaks of serenity. To be on that beach at that moment is to feel whatever cares the day may have offered fade away.

The figures are backlit by the late day light so that only hints of color show at their outlines. Pinks, blues, and purples from the distant edge of sunset dance in the sea, while the surf glows white. Reproduction from a scratch board and watercolor original.

This is a detail of my latest addition to my ArtId gallery and most definitely and 'Artist at Play" product. I had created an ACEO by developing some odd bits of color already existing on a small sheet of paper cut from a failed painting The ACEO was in a vertical format and showed a little sheep in a shed and some foliage in the background. I liked it a lot and decided to build a larger painting from the basic set of forms and colors. However, in the larger size a horizontal composition felt right. For this larger version, I also decided on acrylics rather then the watercolor and pen & ink used for the ACEO.

Original acrylic painting features a black sheep in a field of dry yellow grass. A farm shed is behind the sheep and to the right, while a bit of sky is seen through the lilac and green trees in the background. This playful acrylic is painted on canvas board. The sheep has spiral curls shown by digging back to gray white through the top layer of paint. This layered composition is colorful, crisp with high contrast, and meant to make the viewer smile.

How many of you create your own Christmas cards? This is one of the images I used this year on my personal Christmas greetings; I had a couple of others that I used at the top of letters or invitations. The Smithsonian magazine December issue in an article by Abby Callard called "Glee Mail" shows cards created for their personal greetings by a number of noted artists. I particularly like an Art Nouveau style card created by August Arp shown in the magazine. They put more artists' cards on their website at http//www.Smithsonian.com/cards.

These cards were a way for each of these artists to send a very personal message that only they could create.

My watercolor Santa brings a Merry Christmas wish to those of you here at ArtId, and best wishes for a happy and creative New Year.

A red zinnia fills a 5" by 5" square. This is not a classic miniature which takes a larger subject and renders in on a tiny scale, but an approximately life size flower. However is is rendered in a fairly painterly representation that does not claim to be the flower but pleasing lines and colors that will certainly put you in mind of a flower. The blush tone of the background plays a bit with the reflected color we often show in white fabric in more complex floral paintings.

It is rather pleasant sitting on an easel among other loved objects although I can well imagine someone finding a wall spot for it.

I like the layering that is so apparent in zinnia blossoms, as though they were advertising their complexity. You have bits of light and shadow, and that little circlet of extra color with its own dark spots at the center. I've painted them in bouquets before, but I let this one shine all on its own.

I made this sketch on a recent trip to Felton, California, a small town among the redwood forests in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco. The bridge is reputed to the the tallest covered wooden bridge in the world, and I drew it straight on to emphasize the height.

It was a brisk fall morning, with a wind sufficient to damage and shut down San Francisco's Bay Bridge, some miles to the north, but simply chilly in Felton. I worked fairly quickly because I did not want to be out in that location too long. Under pleasanter weather conditions, I painted a plien air acrylic version of the bridge in two morning sessions last year. That is listed on my Etsy site http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=20682410

The top of the bridge is out of the picture plane in this drawing; an effect I rather like as I think it is one more element that stresses the height of this redwood structure. Fall color in the leaves adds warmth the watercolor wash.

Our LOST (Lodi Open Studios Tour) event last weekend was pronounced best ever by the artists and by the many visitors who talked about their pleasure in the tour. I showed some of my art in the garden leading into the studio. This is a popular feature with my studio visitors as well as that of my friends Sam Bassett and Pepe Pool http://www.studiosamba.net/index.html who show their concrete sculptures in a garden setting. I sold a large framed painting from the garden, not the one shown here but a poured watercolor pieces called "Heavenly Path".

I love how organized my studio is in the aftermath of the tour. I know it won't stay that way, but it's been five days and it still looks good. It was fun showing my workspace to others, both artists and non-artists, and a lot of new people "discovered" me. I think we all heard "I had no idea there were so many wonderful artists in this community" more than once.

Of my other sales, the most surprising and fun, was having someone totally fall in love with a page of my sketchbook with a plein ariwatercolor of the base of a redwood tree. This person already has two of my paintings, so for her I gladly put a price on the watercolor sketch and tore the page from the sketchbook!

I painted this after a walk behind my brother's house. The hilly terrain is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. I chose watercolor for it's transparency. For me it is the memory of a walk with my sisters and nieces and nephews out across a field around a natural pond fed by a spring, and among the trees. It was late spring with the trees still in the bright clean green of new leaf growth, plenty of wildflower bloom, and a wonderful clarity to the air.

A blue vase with yellow and pink snapdragons is arranged with two lemons and various drapes of fabric. Colors are reflected from one items to another. 10"×14" watercolor image.

What pleases me most about his painting is the reflected light on the lemons and the way the wide part of the vase has picked up yellow from the flowers.

I haven't been posting, but I have been painting and organizing. It's two weeks until LOST (Lodi Open Studios Tour), and yesterday evening we launched our preview show and event raffle at the Lodi Community Art Center Gallery. Our best lure to get everyone out to the all the studios in the event is an opportunity to possibly win $1200 of art of your choice from the artists in the tour if you visit every studio and get your passport (ticket) stamped.

This event is tons of work, but I'm doing it for the third time and consider it well worthwhile. It gets me painting intensely because I would not like to have visitors feel that they were seeing basically work that had been in previous shows.

It makes me think about what I do and why I do it. I know that my visitors are going to want the stories that reveal this. Increased self-understanding is always good.

I want the studio to look good so I see that it does--it's kind of the invite people over you show them respect by having a clean house thing. (I long ago gave up apologizing for the messes we all have if I have drop in guests). I love a clean studio.

We make sure the garden is at its best because I show some of my art there. I should; the garden is a great source of inspiration.

Open Studios is a wonderful opportunity to meet people who enjoy art and talking about art.

Sales opportunities, both immediate and future, arise. This year I do want to have plenty of small works and reproductions available, because people's desire for art does not diminish in a recession, but their disposable income may.

It's fun working with the other artists as we set this thing up. Last year we made a quick preview tour on the Friday evening before , and we plan to do that again. I would recommend it to anyone who is part of a tour. Not only do you get the pleasure of seeing how your colleagues work and their newest creations, but each of you is in a better position to recommend the other parts of the tour to your own visitors. You will help make it a better event for yourself and for the art patrons if you are supportive on one another.

Three red ripe tomatoes sit on a green surface in front of a wall with ochre yellow and red tones. Shadows and highlights add strength to the simple and effective composition. You can almost taste the plump, garden fresh tomatoes.

The red and green complements go far in building interest. Actually nature starts the tomato on the plant with that pleasing companionship of color. It seemed appropriate to carry it through to the finished painting.

My life seems tomato filled of late and the abundant vines provide material for salads, snacks, vegetable medleys, dried tomatoes for future use, jars of thick puree for winter soups and sauces, the ketchup simmering on the stove at this moment--and fantastic painting models.

Small acrylic painting has a snow covered hill in the foreground. In the moonlight it has tints of blue and has white highlights, beyond that is the sea painted in the cold blue of ice, the blue white moon rides in a deep blue sky. The lines a simple, the palate limited, and the composition compelling.

I love detail and complexities, but sometimes simple is absolutely best. I wanted to create a painting that was restful without being static. I aimed for a crackling sense of immediacy in the cold of a clear winter night. Much is left to the viewer's imagination. The only colors I used were titanium white and ultramarine blue. Limiting the palette really forces the artist to concentrate on building value--those essential contrasts of light and dark.

The Pumpkin Patch at Honey Lake was filled with bright, beautiful pumpkins casting deep shadows. I wanted to show these three pumpkins as the stars of the piece, but I also wanted to show the field in which they grew without diluting the power of the close-up pumpkins. The resulting composition was something of a tromp l'oeil piece as if the main image were on a separate sheet floated on the larger landscape. I chose sepia rather than black pens as part of a desire to make the background painting recede and move the smaller detail painting forward.

Honey Lake is formed in a large shallow basin in the Eastern Sierra along the route from Reno, Nevada to Susanville, California. During mid to late summer the lake bed may be entirely dry. With fall rains it begins to fill again, adds snow and ice in winter, and is at its greatest depth with run-off and snow melt in spring. It is good farm land for strawberries, pumpkins, and a few other crops in an area which is mostly grazing land, national forest, and barren desert. You could not ask for better light for a painting than a crisp fall day or better inspiration that the agricultural abundance in a contrasting landscape.

Fall colors in the foreground are highlighted by the contrasting purple and blue of the distant mountains including Lassen's peak. I began this as a plein air work in the light of late afternoon in the autumn with the shadows of evening starting to fall, but the fading sunlight bouncing golden off the mountain top. I exaggerated the colors somewhat to give the feeling to the time and place to the viewer. We were on the western slopes of the Sierra/Cascade region looking back at the volcanic peak of Lassen on our way home from a camping trip at Lassen National Park when we stopped to enjoy and capture this scene.

I did the painting several years ago. I liked the painting, but it lived in a drawer waiting for that something to make it sparkle. The transitions from section to section were just a little to subtle in the effort to capture the soft light of the later part of the day. In the last couple of years I've done some very successful work combining watercolor with pen and ink, and it seem to me that some line work might be just what it took to bring this painting to completion. I liked the result and hope viewers do, too.