Watercolor and pencil on a nautical map.

Paula has not given me permission to post this, but hey, it's not done yet. This is a different way of painting for me. I've been heavily influenced in the past few months by Habib and Douglas. Douglas (shhh, don't tell Paula) has been helping me with this one. His approach is to slap around with the paint until he finds a part that I like and completely destroy it. Believe it or not, once I get past my initial burst of fury I find this a great help. Those spots left on their own start to scream everytime change aproaches them. They become surrounded by a wall of 'where the change must stop' and thus protected, vaunt themselves as the best parts, when, in reality, they are pretty holes in my painting given undue respect. In my mad attempts to reconstruct what is being destroyed, a much stronger, experienced painting evolves.

I started this when I was living in Chicago and have been meaning to get back to it ever since. I was going to name it 'In the Garden' but I realized I already have a painting with that name (you're not ready to see that one yet). I'm posting this in it's unfinished state because... well, because I Like it, and it's different than most of my work, and if my blog is any barometer of dilligence, I may not finish this for many more years.

Okay-

So I haven't blogged in a while. or more than once.

I'm working in the parks, now that it's warm, and have been making sketches of trees as well as drawing people. I'd like to start including a sketchbook here if I can surmount my blogg-diligence impotence.

this painting is the first-on site landscape I've done in acrylic.

I'm thinking about attacking it in the studio.



This "in progress" painting is the second acrylic landscape, a view off my back porch.


here is a tree





there are much better trees coming.

this is the sky.



here's a plant on my porch at twilight.





I would visually regail you with my sketchbook now, but I held the camera too close and all the pictures are bluurry.