Sunday Painting: Golden Greenbelt

While some watch football, others paint. I think I have completed this piece.

Resolving Issues

Painting today began with my gull painting. I could tell I was not in harmony with that so I switched to the canvas above. I made some good progress though I think something is still not quite grabbing me. The storm rages on. I will sleep on this and come back to it again.

Painting Sketch

Today I was back in the studio painting working on my Coastal Vallemar piece. Do you ever get to that point where you wish you could press the undo button and get back to where you were before? That is how I felt today when I was struggling to get just the right intensity on the foreground weeds. The more I worked, the less sure I was. That was when it was time to loosen up with the above sketch. I grabbed a 8" x 10" canvas and decided to do the piece above as quickly as possible.

Untitled Coastal Vallemar Painting

I've been working on this 20" x 10" oil on canvas for the last week or so. I'm feeling it is almost finished. Alternately, I have been working on my gull painting I started in November. It's interesting to work on a nearly monochromatic painting along with this color rich piece. I keep gravitating to the sun filled colorful pieces rather than the more somber coastal gray day paintings.

Meanwhile, I studied the gull paintings by renowned Swedish Artist, Lars Jonsson last night in his new book that displays fabulous paintings in oils and watercolors expertly executed in beautiful simplicity in the field. It also shows drawings from his sketch books which are his field notes.

New Year's Inspiration

Today I hiked from Vallemar out around the water treatment plant across the hills of Mori Point looking for new inspiration. It was a lovely day and there were quite a few hikers out, but still peaceful enough for me to find my own quiet connection with my surroundings.



It almost seemed like spring with the willows beginning to form buds.

Above Mori Point I found new horizons for new art.
It was a revitalizing walk.

Old concrete highway dividers, an enviornmental eyesore on beautiful Mori Point, became a canvas of textural painted sculpture against the natural backdrop. As beautiful as they are, they still look foreign against the eroding hillside above it. They seem to have been planted by aliens.

Speaking of aliens... well actually native frogs... I was completely baffled by invisible singing frogs. When I got to the spot where they seemed to be, suddenly the frogs became silent. I looked and looked and they were absolutely nowhere to be seen. Is it possible they were burrowed underground?