Last of the season in Park City

Here are four more, done in Park City before the weather turned too cold to watercolor outdoors. More to come when I get a chance to visit warmer climes!

Painting above Park CIty

A friend and photographer, Tom Clark, took pics while I was painting at Gaurdsman's Pass above Park City. Spectacular light, and starting to get chilly in the late afternoon.

Plein air festival at Thanksgiving Point

This week I participated in the Plein air festival at Thanksgiving Point. It was good to meet and connect with some local artists and to see their work. There are always fewer watercolorists at these events but interesting for me to see how other people work. The constraints of having timed paint-outs then submitting the work for judging was intense.

Another week of painting

Park City is an amazing place. Just 20 minutes from Salt Lake and the conveniences of a city, but a quiet spectacularly beautiful place in the tops of the mountains. There is the one drawback of the 20 mile mountainous freeway drive at 80 miles an hour which is usually filled with slow semi-trucks and broken down vehicles going up and white knuckle speed demons going down!

Still working this week in my small notebook, I am going to start painting larger now. I feel like these small sketches are trying to contain too much info in too small a space. Also I want to get a looser feeling and I can't seem to do that with little brushes.

Little Postcards

Using my new Sennelier half pan palette and a handmade unsized-cotton watercolor sketchbook, I've been thinking about postcard images. These all measure approx. 7"x 9". The weather has been spectacular and I paint at about 8:30 each morning for a couple of hours.

Painting every day again!

We're living in Park City and I am painting everyday. I got my paint-out kit replaced so here are a few views of the area around where we live at Fox Point and in Park City. Most are a walkable distance from our place.

First Week in Utah

We made the cross country move! Now getting more familiar with Salt Lake City, the surrounding mountains, and family here. It is beautiful and we plan to stay for some months. I had a chance to paint one afternoon in Emigration Canyon. THEN as a welcome to Utah gesture someone stole my paint-out backpack out of my car. Grrrrr! Now I need to re-supply and get out there again.

Checking out Oregon

We went on a relocation visit to the Portland area and I had a chance to do a couple of quick scenes. One at Cannon Beach after a beautiful forested hike to the shore, and the other of a cottage in Eugene with a yard full of Rhododendrons. We had perfect weather and plan to move to Portland eventually.

Spring in Rhinebeck

The weather has allowed me to get out again on a regular basis and paint in this beautiful place. We will be moving at the end of June so everything looks even more golden to me now. Here are a couple of local homes. I hope to have a chance to post more in the weeks ahead.

California Paintout '09

Brad Teare and I met for a 5 day paintout in San Diego. Since I usually paint alone, it was energizing to choose a scene, compose, paint and critique the result with another painter. I took him to some of my favorite paint spots and some new ones and together we would discuss the possibilities of composition, cropping, subject, lighting, etc. We approach a scene differently, I almost always see the panoramic possibilities, and he focuses more on a detail composition and explores volume.

Battiquitos Lagoon Eucalyptus

Mission San Luis Rey

Swami's Beach

Balboa Museum of Man

As often happens when doing plein-air painting, I asked myself why I bother. When I'm working on a commissioned painting or illustration I know why I am painting. I am completing an assignment, working for a living, solving a problem. But, when I am painting for myself, especially outdoors, if a painting gets difficult, or I loose my focus or things go badly I become discouraged, frustrated and bored and ask myself "Why do I paint?"

This happens frequently enough that I have to try to answer the question.  My current answer would  be to capture beauty, tell my story, develop my technique, see and design more clearly.  And when it works, I love it.

Self Realization Garden

Oceanside Pier

Torrey Pines

Painting outdoors again

During a very snowy winter I was able to take a trip to beautiful warm and sunny Belize and do some small sketches.

AT THE SEASIDE: Caye Caulker















Rainbow Hotel







A Caye Caulker Wharf








Rainbow Wharf











IN THE JUNGLE: Clarissa Falls