Morning Sun, 18 x 24 inches, pastel.

This studio painting is done from a photo taken on a trip to Sonoma. The morning fog was clinging to the ground and creating an ethereal light effect that the painting celebrates.

Cherries in a Plastic Bag, 11 x 14 inches, oil.

Kim Fancher Lordier came over to my studio today, and we worked in tandem on paintings of this still-life. Painting with direct observation--what someone referred to as "the razor sharp eye" always rewards me with a fun painting. I find the process of true observation very relaxing and rejuvenating.

Napa Trees, 16 x 18 inches, pastel.

With high summer here, it seems a good time to post this painting that I completed by mining a field sketch. I wrecked the original paintings by fixing it with matte fixative, but I enjoyed the motif. I redid the painting by distilling the motif to the elements that I enjoyed the most. As always, the color harmonies interest me as a pastelist. Pastels lend themselves very well to this sort of experimentation. Here is the original, just for comparison:

As you can see, I zoomed way in, and fiddled the color!

Mill in Buren

The Mill at Buren

Here is a watercolor of the the flour mill in Buren, the small village in the Netherlands where I just spent a few lovely days eating crisp apples and cherries, riding bikes and visiting family. Summer there is sweet and gentle with warm breezes and soft showers. I took only watercolors on this trip and enjoyed playing with them for the first time in years very much. As you can see I juxtapose a waterproof black drafting pen over the watercolor, after doing a pencil sketch. This painting still needs a hint of sky painted in. I did not do it on site for fear of running the wet paint of the foreground into the sky. I will sit down this afternoon and finish up.