Saturday, October 31, 2009

Wow, I'm back!


It's been a long time since I've posted. Lots has been happening to keep me busy.
Several of us went up to Murphys, CA to attend a workshop by Kathleen Dunphy. The mountains are so beautiful in mid October, lots of red and yellow leaves to go with the green. The workshop was wonderful and lots of information to digest. She does such beautiful work and is a very good teacher as well.

Kathleen's palette is very limited - lemon yellow, cad red light, ultramarine blue, naples yellow, cold gray and white. I am in the learning curve on mixing colors, but I've been practicing. Lovely greens from this palette,and great shadow colors;
and for plein air you don't have to carry as many paints.

After the workshop we stayed 3 more days and painted away. It rained one day and we painted indoors - a lesson learned - Bring extra lightinging with us next time. All of our paintings looked pretty good in the lack of sufficient light but the next morning in full light all the colors were really off. But it was practice anyhow.

We drove up to beautiful Alpine Lake. While it was raining in Arnold where we were staying, it snowed up at Alpine Lake. So we stood in snow and painted! Actually the snow that was left was very little but anyhow, it sounded good, toughing it out in the snow!! We had a great time and learned a lot and before we knew it, it was time to go back home.

Then there was catching up on everything at home! Funny how that always happens. And now thing are taken care of and I can paint again. I will take pictures of a couple paintings I did at the workshop and post them later today. The photo above is a painting I did for my daughter of the children at the pumpkin patch. The photo has lots of glare, hate that!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

A slice of America!

Oh, dear, life has gotten in my way. I have not had much time to do any painting and that passion is building up!!! I need to paint! Well, tomorrow is painting day!!

I have also been gathered up in planning our June trip we call "A slice of America" trip. We are having so much fun planning it! It will last about 20 some days. So far we will go from the San Francisco Bay Area down to Calico, CA and on to the Grand Canyon. Lots more to come. And think of the beautiful landscapes!!!