Watercolor!

"Ilia, do we paint light to dark or dark to light?" "Yes, that's the question."

Caran d'Ache Aquarelle Pencils on Ampersand Aquaboard, 5 x 7

Just tried using the Ampersand Aquaboard for the first time. It is a lovely surface but the painting didn't come out as well as I wished. I had forgotten the different rules of water colors and how forgiving and "squishy" oil is. Anyway, first shot on the Aquaboard and first time with a "real" watercolor in quite a while. I think I won't give up yet!

Pretty Copper Frame for the Berkeley Pit Mine!

On and Off

I haven't posted in a while and haven't painted in a while. After the little show/arts and crafts fair I wasn't in a mood, though I've done a couple small paintings they both suck and I am not sure why I did them; just to do them, I guess, which is perfectly fine.

From time to time I read something someone has to say about painting, and I realize that thinking about painting in that way doesn't make me want to paint. I find this kind of thinking, knowing, takes my joy away. Not words, color and a surface and a question and something to see.

Why? What is painting to me that makes it different? I don't know. Writing is a more disciplined combination of inspiration and craft; teaching is craft mixed with a tincture of inspiration. Dealing with the details of life, paying bills, registering the car, dealing with taxes is craft and nothing else. I think painting is, for me the OPPOSITE end of what appears to be a continuum. Painting is craft learned through joy just as dealing with everyday annoyances is joy (relief?) acquired through craft.

Entering a Contest!

Willow Leaves Sold

I decided to take the advice of Phebe Burnham, an artist (and great lady!) I met at the Descanso Arts and Crafts Fair and enter paintings in a juried contest in Balboa Park, in Spanish Village. I remember so many late Sunday afternoons after going to the zoo when I would wander through the little studios that make up Spanish Village. It's a "mini" neighborhood, a collection of smaller than normal houses built during WWII to fool the Japanese into thinking they were actually higher up in the air than they were. This would have made them easier targets for guys on the ground to hit. San Diego at that time must have been amazing looking, covered in camouflage nets with neighborhoods painted on them and a few of these scaled down neighborhoods to add to the illusion.




Yesterday I mailed in my entry fee. I plan to enter two paintings in the 1 foot show and one in the normal show because the frame on that painting disqualifies it from the one-foot show. We take our paintings down there on March 1; they are judged in "real life" not from an electronic submission, and the reception for the winners is March 4.

Berkeley Pit Mine - reframed in copper

Guatay Mountain in April

Sold!

Cottonwood in a Blizzard on Viejas Boulevard, Descanso CA
5x7 oil on Ampersand Gesso board

Old School

I decided to frame this in an ornate, old-style frame after seeing The Power of Art by Simon Schama and all of Van Gogh's paintings framed in this way. It seemed a lovely counterpoint to the brush strokes and light/dark interplay of impressionist painting, the raw color and direct strokes.

It took a while to find this frame, but I think it's perfect. The gold leads the viewer onto the trail, while the green areas, glossy and solid, focus the eye on the vortex made by the overhanging trees, their shadows, the up-reaching Manzanita, grass and wild-flowers as the trail narrows and heads up the mountain.

Pryor Mountains -- waiting for the horses!

This is a scene from a photo sent by a friend -- but the place is very familiar; it is the Pryor Mountains south of Billings! We'll see if I'm able to paint the small herd of wild horses grazing on the grass in the foreground of the picture!