California Buckeye (Aesculus californica) Stump

California Buckeye's grow wild all over our hills in this area. The trees have a mystical quality to them especially in the early spring when they are flushing out chartreuse new leaves in full umbrellas that touch the ground. This time of year all or the leaves have fallen and the knobby gnarly trunks are exposed.

On a hike, with the ever present dogs, yesterday, I pick up a piece of stump to draw. I had no idea how hard it is to make bumps "stand up" off of a flat sheet of paper. Half way through the drawing/painting, I thought this stumps true calling in life was to the fireplace! This morning I came back to it for a few minutes and finished it the best I could, for now. I think I will try the whole thing again in just plain pencil, to see how that turns out, (if it doesn't become fire wood) I'll post the results in a day or two.

View off Mt Tam

This is painted from a photo I took. I am still practicing some techniques like "fog", distance perspective and blended land colors. Over all I am pleased with the final out come. The land masses in the distance were barely visible up through the fog.

Key

Seems I spend way too much time looking around for things to draw! I was trying to find an old skeleton key but can't seem to locate such and animal.

I have been working on technique and almost have my Morning Glory painting done (if I don't kill it, tweaking it).

Tonight I wanted to draw something simple and forget about all the other stuff for a while...

Absorbing

For those of you that are wondering if I have given up on painting; no, I have not. The past few days I have been running through my mind some to the techniques Jana taught in our class and trying to practice some of the things I watched her do. One of the things that I know she said, but it took awhile to absorb, was to guide the paint with water. Yes, she paints it on, but then she led the paint with the water softening the line and edges. I will get back to creating stuff shortly, for now it is just technique...

Tootsie Pop

It's the simple things that make life sweet.

Vineyard

I took a drive last week, out by the vineyards. The leaves are turning but still haven't fallen so the colors are vivid. The morning that I went was grey and rainy which seemed to intensify the chartreuse and apricots in the foliage.

Working on a larger scale takes longer to complete, especially if there is a lot of detail in the picture. Need to use my sketch book to fill in the blanks between postings...