Twilight Pool

Acrylic on Cardstock

A quick sketch from a photo I took just before sunset. I know the shadow areas are too dark to be believed, but that's how I see 'em.

Melons

Acrylic on Cardstock

More abstraction.

Tomales Bay Oysters

Acrylic on Cardstock

Just a quick study of a view across the bay in Tomales.

War Feathers II

Acrylic on Card Stock

Just a bit of fun....

I went back into this abstract with an blade and crafted some highlights and motion. I don't think I'd ever do that on a canvas, but it would work on panel paintings that started with a white background. Hmmm.

Glass Haus

Acrylic on Canvas Paper

From a recent snapshot. That's why it's so high-contrast.

That's it.

Out Barn

Acrylic on Panel - (repainted in 2011 - this version is gone)

A dull foggy morning in Sonoma, but a few of us set up in hopes that the sun would appear. Angela Fabela from the Monday Morning Painters was with us and he pointed out this small building to me.

What I liked about it was that there was a lot going on in the foreground, but that the rest of it went way back to the woods. Looking at the results, it kinda wound up flatter than I'd hoped. It's probably because the detail and size of brushwork is the same throughout. Hmmm.

SF Rooftops

Acrylic on Canvas Paper

This is more like what I had originally intended to do. Same scale, but with the knife instead. Kinda fun, but not sure I could do a lot in this style.

San Francisco Rooftops

Acrylic on Canvas Paper

This months Different Strokes from Different Folks assignment. I was really hoping to do something a little more abstract, and that's how I started, but I forgot to stop and put in a lot more detail than I intended. Take a look at the other entries. There's one by Jill Donahue that better captures what I was imagining, and lots of other great ones, including another superb piece by the host, Karin Jurick.

Red Barn Sketch

Acrylic on Canvas Panel

With 20 minutes left on the clock, I decided to try another composition. As a bonus, the sun had just come out, so I tried to get that contrast between what was in light and what was not. Having spent the whole morning painting in very flat light this was a little more fun. (oh, I'll be posting that one next).

And those "special effects" in the foreground came from packing it up before it was really dry enough, and having it stick to another board, and then separate badly. A rare experience when painting acrylic in Sonoma while it's still in the high 90's.

Pool Vista

Acrylic on Canvas Panel (destroyed)
Yet another pool sketch. It's not so much that I love this view, it's that I'm lazy and this is a great spot. Shady, and between the pool and the kitchen. The colors are staying nice a vibrant, but again, they don't offer any clue to atmospherical depth.
For a change, I didn't paint the fence. I painted around the fence.

Poolside

Acrylic on Panel

For a change, I decided I'd try to paint colors and not shapes (whatever that means). So, I didn't do a sketch on the canvas, but rather started putting in color areas. By the halfway mark, I'd really wished I had put some shapes in first. I couldn't tell which post I was painting (or around which) and I also wound up with the result of the fields behind the fence looking like they were on the same plane as the patio. Bad, bad, bad.

Still, no one was physically harmed, and something might have been learned. At least the colors are pretty intense, which is good, since that's the language I was trying to use.

Fitch Mountain

Acrylic on Canvas Panel

This was a quick sketch from the top of the hill, towards the end of the day. It's kind of a random mess. There really wasn't any foreground, but now it appears to force itself. I guess the mind wants to see a foreground anyway.