Messy

Three sloppy little paintings, two in process. The tree is acrylic on cardboard. I love the way watered down acrylic looks on panel or board. The middle painitng is very thin oil on cardboard. It started out as underpainting for some future plein air work (too much bare canvas ends up showing through if the surface is white), but I think it will be a landscape made up of many thin layers of paint. I'd like to see how little information I can include and still have a clear image. The last painting is another plein air from Yellowstone. Sometimes a super quick sketch is the only way to get out of a rut with the watercolors, and sometimes nothing works.

Wyoming trip

Some watercolors from the Tetons and Yellowstone.

Palomarin watercolor

Too hot to be in the studio and too nice not to be outside. 

Two new little paintings

Just started these this week.  Hope to finish them in time for open studios in October.  Both are oil, the top one on canvas and the bottom one on gessoed cardboard.

Drakes Estero

Can't seem to stop things from sloping to the right.

Paintings in process

All oil on canvas. Sizes vary from 28"x52" to 20"x28". Top to bottom: my grandfather shooting a gun in Mexico in the 70's, muni depot after a storm (bad photo - the whites are not so bright), and a view of the bay and Oakland from Marin (from memory) with freaky fog and haze.

Rocks and fog

The fog painting works as an icy landscape when it's flipped over.  Freaky.

Even more watercolor

More watercolor

Plein air again today.  I'm learning to slow down with the watercolors.  The crazy skies looked like a mess of high clouds and low fog with a bright blue background. Gave me a chance to experiment with how to work with wet on wet.  All are 9"x12".

Bolinas Lagoon plein air

Plein air oils!

Plein air paintings done over the last few days. All are oil on canvas or canvas panel, and most are about 14"x18" (the bottom one is 20"x28"). This is my first week of plein air oils. Watercolor on location now seems easy by comparison. Most of these will be reworked at least a little bit in the studio. Still learning how to handle all that wet paint on the canvas and keep it from turning to mud.

Figure drawing

I finally made it out to one of the figure drawing sessions down in the mission. All drawings are pencil or conte. Poses range from one minute (sketches at the bottom) to twenty minutes (sketches at the top).

Rowdy jay style

Back to drawing birds at the California Academy of Sciences. It's been a while since I've done any drawing with sharp pencils (last time I drew the birds was in November), so I thought I might start with conte. It was messy and kind of like making sculpture. Lots of fun and pretty surprising at the same time.

More plein air