Oregos at Requa

I want to paint this on a 1/2 sheet of WC paper. This morning, I thought I'd try it first on my small 10"x7" WC pad. Boy, am I glad I did! I think I'll eliminate the forward most rock. The yellow is a bit bright and the tilt of her head is a bit too far forward. For the most part, I really like it.

This rock formation fascinates me. It is at the mouth of the Klamath River. If you scroll down to the previous post, you can read the legend. I couldn't put them in the same post because you can only enlarge 1 image...

Oregos Legend

Sorry, I cut off the bottom right corner...

Mouth of the Smith River

This is the Mouth of the Smith River where it meets the sea. There is a cluster of seals on the tip there and while I was painting this, one of them got out of the water to climb up.

I can see now that I have this posted, that my water line on the river side, slopes down toward the bottom left. Sigh, details, details, details; part of why I hold stuff to post over night, I tend to catch these things. Although this I painted the same day that I painted the rest of the plein aire stuff, just hadn't looked at it closely enough.

How-On-Quet Cemetery

I ran across this Tolowa Indian Cemetery in How-On-Quet the other day, when I was out sketching. The Tolowa Indians had their tribal grounds at the basin of the Smith River in Northwestern California and Southwestern Oregon. Entry into the cemetery seemed to be private as there was a "No Trespassing" sign posted and a chain on the gate. It is one of the loveliest "resting places" that I have seen.

I started this and then tossed it aside because I was frustrated with the way it was coming out. This morning I pulled it back out and decided to finish it. The graves weren't as uniform as they are in my picture. The ovals are raised mounds, there were several of those, the one in the bottom right corner had Abalone shells all the way around it and flowers on top. I had painted just the plain graves all the way across then realized that the mounds weren't "prepared for a burial" they were the finished grave... so I changed them, makes it difficult to see the flowers on top. This whole thing was painted tighter than I would have liked but I guess this is better than tossing it...

Black Ribbons in the Sky

Yup, I realize my barn has a serious slope. I wanted to paint quickly and not get caught up in the details. I was afraid if I started fiddling with the lines I'd lose the looseness of the painting and I liked that. This was across the street from the cows (from my last post). While I was painting the cows, I looked over at one point and it looked like a black, lacey quilt blowing over the field, there were so many birds, a minute later they were all gone...

Nap Time

I wanted to do some plein aire sketching today, so I headed for an area where there are farms scattered along the sea. When I do plein aire sketching, most of the time I do it from inside my car just because I have a place to put my paint and water. Today, I pulled off to the side of the road to paint these cows; during the time that I was parked, 3 people stopped to ask if I was ok. I finally figured out that part of the reason they were stopping was because my lights were on. If I open the door, the buzzer sounds but not if I am just parked. I guess between the angle that I was holding my head and the lights folks thought I might be in trouble. Kind of them none the less.

These cows made me laugh because I'd start to sketch one and look back up at it and it would be laying flat. After I was all done then some of them decided to stand up and eat.

The grass is a more of a spring green , this whole scan ended up with too much pink as I was trying to get the green right. Sigh..one of these days I'll get Photo Shop to always work the way I want it too...until then, I'll do the best I can.

Snags at Lake Earl

Our local art gallery has demonstrations once a month by various oil or watercolor artists from around the area. The folks at the gallery video tapethe demos and have them available for checkout by the gallery members. Since I am now a member, I checked out a demo done by Deborah Dawson http://www.deborahadawson.com/. She had taken some photographs at one of the local wild life preserves and did her painting from those photos. I love the way she did the sky and since I had been thinking of trying to paint some of the Alders in the area that were going to require masking, I thought I'd give her techniques a try. This is the result.

I went out to the same area yesterday and took some of my own pictures so that I could get my trees drawn correctly. From there, I pretty much followed along with the colors she was using and the way she was laying down her paints. I'm pleased with the outcome even if I can't really claim it as "my own". I learned a lot about not judging too quickly when something "isn't working out" as there were several times last night , I thought that, looked at her painting and realized that hers was in about the same state. Using the masking fluid was fun for this and now I'm looking forward to trying a painting with the Alders in it.

Cloud studies

I've been frustrated with my skies lately, they are blah and uninteresting. So last night I sat down after getting some good advise from Karen @ http://www.karensblog.com/ and did some quick studies. These are the two that I liked the best as I achieved more or less, the look I was after. I am sure I will be posting more in the future as I can tell, this is going to take some practice. If any of you have found any cool techniques you'd like to share or just want to join in with the practices, I'd love it...

Forest Bridge

A cool thing about hiking in the woods up here is all the wooden bridges laid out along the trails. Sometimes they cross creeks, or as in this case, they may just cross a difficult gully. That is a small set of stairs in the lower right corner, another one of the simple pleasures to be found. They weren't that steep in reality but I wanted to get them in the picture so I changed them : ) I love the rustic feeling they lend and am glad that the forestry department doesn't use metal despite the fact that it would be much more impervious to the rains and fog. All of the forest wild flowers are springing up, in another couple of weeks all kinds of blooms will be popping.

This path meanders along a small lagoon. The water lilies are turning from winter brown to a nice green, buds are already starting to form on them too. It is a scene that I want to try painting but it started getting to chilly to sit and paint this afternoon as a storm was moving in.

2 pager of beach combers

It was beautiful up here today, lots of folks out enjoying the sun. I started with the left page painting of the Dad and his two boys. They seemed to be having lots of fun. The older boy looked about 5 and the younger one (in front) was about 3. The little one kept doing everything the older one did like carrying the staff. I had actually left and then decided to go back and paint the other page which is why the sea isn't fully consistent. The horizon is actually straight but I had a rough time with the photo so it looks like it slants up. On the first one, I painted the horizon water all the way across then put in the rocks, consequently, the shadowing on the rocks isn't correct. While I was painting I was listening to the barking of the sea lions and the sound of the fog horn mixed with the cry of the ever present seagulls. This week has just been one of those where I can't seem to hold the brush the right way to paint. Painted LOTS nothing would come out the way that I wanted it too. Hopefully things will be better from here on out...