Blog

I like a planner where I can see my whole week laid out in a grid from 5 am until 11 pm. You wouldn't think it would be hard to find, but it is! Some planners think you don't have any planning on weekends, or don't get up before 7 am or your day ends at 5 on the dot. I finally found one that is OK...it's not perfect; it starts at 6 and the weekends are cut short. But it will do. The cover was really boring, though. Plain blue with some kind of title about inner peace or something. I decided to spruce it up by painting it with white gesso, then gold. I got out my acrylics and started with some aqua and yellow-gold paint, spritzed with water, wiped, painted...spritzed. Added lines for trees, tilted, sprayed. Did some final touches with a brush and some spattering. This is the back (you can see the spiral binding in the picture)...still need to finish the front cover. I like it waaaay better now!

Painting every day--or trying to--has it's advantages. It feels easier to take advantage of happy accidents, try new things, or go with a different format. For this painting, I spread a paste called "absorbent ground" on a 9" x 9" hardboard panel. Once it's dry, it accepts watercolor almost like paper would. The paint doesn't spread the same way or soak in, but it doesn't bead-up and slide off either. It's like painting on chalk...it's soft. This is a scene from a prescribed burn in Ponderosa pine in the southwestern US where a low-intensity fire is often called "friendly flame" due to the fact that this is the type of fire that keeps these dry pine ecosystems healthy. These fires remove dead and down material from the forest floor, remove the abundance of small seedlings that otherwise crowd the forest with doghair thickets, and promote bunch grasses. Trees like ponderosas have thick bark and most large trees survive the friendly flames just fine.

Yesterday was a holiday so I had the chance to spend more time in my studio than usual. I typically find an hour to paint each weekday morning from 5-6 am and then it's time to get going for the day, off to my day job. On weekends I can sometimes find more time...maybe 2 or 3 hours if we are not off to some other event with friends or family. So, Monday was a good day to send the kiddo off on the school bus and then get to work. But, of course, instead of working hard on a painting I'd really like to make some progress on...a painting that I find pretty challenging at the moment....I went and played with a whole bunch of supplies and surfaces to try some things I've never tried before! I got some small 6 x 6" clayboard panels for Christmas and they've been sitting in the cellophane waiting for what? I don't know. I used acrylics that were watered down and I liked the effects...the paint glides on like butter and didn't spread out too much. I will have to experiment more and maybe on some larger panels. I really do believe that the "playing" comes back in a later piece as "experience", so it was worth it, I think.

I decided to try to finish a small painting in just one day. I used a small piece of paper, just an 1/8 sheet of watercolor paper, 300#. The reference photo for this was taken a few summers ago as a huge column "stood up" in the middle of the day and the fire was marching over the ridge.

Sunday morning. Getting up in the dark. Drinking coffee. Glad for the studio space heater. Sunday mornings are when I take time reflect on the week--where have I been....where am I going? I've been trying some fluorescent acrylic markers lately and I really like how they look. They seem like they are probably a bit too bright straight out of the marker tip, but once I incorporate them with other layers and paint colors, I don't think it's too much. The experimentation is a lot of fun--drawing and splattering the paint is different with these markers than with brushes. This image is a bit different from my typical work, but I guess that's all part of the artistic journey.