Feast or Famine

I seem to be painting in waves here. No pun intended. Here are two more that were completed yesterday and luckily Don was in the mood to shoot them last night.

"Summer Storm" Watercolor on Arches 140# CP (11x17)

"Summer Storm" is inspired by another image from our 2007 trip to England. Same road as Greener Pastures. The trees behind the barn were not planned but as is often the case with watercolor, you get happy accidents. At first I was upset that my sky appeared to be marred when the green field bled into it but now I like it.

"California Edge" (Title pending)

If I'm going to be honest I have to tell you that this one started out a lot larger. I intended it to have Bixby Bridge on the left but for some reason it was distracting and didn't seem to fit with the natural coastline and led the eye away from the water and cliffs. Funny thing, that. The bridge IS awesome though. We will always refer to it as the "Bronson Bridge" because it was used in the ancient and short-lived TV series Then Came Bronson starring Michael Parks in which he drove his motorcycle across it in the opening credits. It's located on the Big Sur highway and is quite impressive—just not so much in my painting.

I'm a little behind in listing new work but these will also be added to my Etsy shop.

Such a tease...

I'm working on several new paintings at the moment. They are taking me longer than normal to complete because, as some of you know, I have been hijacked by the knitting fairies. More on THAT later.

For now I will just tell you the titles of the paintings (which are subject the whims of my imagination)…
Shorebird Convention
Bixby Bridge
Around the Bend 
Greener Pastures II
Castle Moonrise 


That's all for now. As soon as they're done and photographed by my wonderful husband I will post them for your opinions. But that will probably to happen until we return from our upcoming road trip to Yosemite and Bodega Bay. I'm hoping to gather more painting inspiration from this trip.

Meanwhile, here's packing to do and I can hear the knitting fairies calling to me "finish this sweater!"

Off the Grid (not me but the painting)

So today I changed my cover image again...(after all I need to keep it fresh) with a painting that I have not added to Etsy yet. I was not sure it would be popular because I have a lot of similar paintings in my "Island" series. Well I was wrong. A bunch of people like it and I put out a plea for a title since I was out of ideas. There were lots of great suggestions but the one I liked best came from Jessica, a dear and long time family friend whom I adore. Jessica had several good ideas herself but this was my favorite.
So next up in my shop will be…

"Off the Grid"

Tripping back to the past

Road trips that is. Several years ago Don and I made an epic road trip in the dead of winter from San Diego to the Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood in Oregon to go skiing. I won't tell you how long ago because it will make me feel old but the fact that we did this in our little orange (yes, orange) Datsun pick-up truck with the camper shell on the back should give you a clue. That and the fact that we were childless at the time.

It was a fun trip and the fact that it was in November meant that we had most of the camping all to ourselves. We camped at wonderful places like Bodega Bay, Russian River, and Cape Lookout along the way. We took lots of pictures because those were our "photography days". Much later I used our photos to do a few paintings of the places we visited.

One of my favorite places was Cape Lookout is located near Tillamook, about an hour and a half west of Portland.  It was such a dramatic beach to come upon after winding through the old growth forest. We were the only ones there and its stark beauty as stayed with me all these years.  A couple of years ago when we drove back from Washington we took a little side trip to see it again. Unfortunately it was getting dark and it was not the same experience but I hope to visit again.

Today, I finally got it together and listed one of those paintings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just one of the many things Don and I are thankful for is how fortunate we are to live so close we are to this:

I took this a few days ago when I went to La Jolla Shores to walk at an extremely low tide. I love the reflections and I will probably do a painting from this at some point. Enjoy your day wherever you are!

Snowy Egret Sentinel —my next painting or...?

Today I fully intended to go to the shores to get some exercise in and see if my egret friends were there again at the "falls" just north of the pier  and below SIO. Somehow that didn't happen. It was too cold and gloomy to go and I knew but the time I got there the tide would be high.

I'm convinced that the bird in the pictures above is the same one I have seen on several occasions. He/she is almost always in the same general location and is extremely tame in that I can get within about six feet before he flies off briefly and then returns when he/she sees I mean no harm. Sometimes there are other snowy egrets there as well. In fact the first time I discovered them it looked like a party was going on under the little waterfall that empties onto the beach there. In the space of about 45 minutes 13 showed up. I took these pics intending to do a new watercolor with this beautiful creature as the subject. But sitting in my "thinking chair" talking on the phone with my daughter and staring at the beginnings of a project I started long ago I came up with another idea. Stay tuned and you will see another side of my art. Art Quilts.