Utah Creek Trail

What a difference a summer makes. Painted here in the spring with greenery and budding trees. After a continued draught everything is dry, dead and dusty. I was out there on Wednesday morning with my plain air group. Lots of sneezing and itchy eyes with the stuff blowing around, but I'd rather be painting.

Fall Color

This was an exercise on desaturation of color. Take a pure color and add its complement to get to a gray and then a dark. It's very enlightening for me to see how bold you can paint and then modify. This was a totally imaginative composition in which I changed values and kept doing the desaturation which I never heard about in my years of painting. I have always mixed my pure color and formed grey, light or dark colors. This was a good exercise to realize what it is really about.

Morning in Locke, CA

Returned home last week and have already had a week of painting. Weather here is warm and bright. This is a painting of the main street in the town of Locke, CA on Wed. morning. It was quiet but for a film crew finishing up a 4-day shoot. They were waiting for the right shadows in an alley of this old Chinese town. While setting up camera shots, they were interesting to talk with, since they waited much of the time. I have painted here many times over the years. The town is usually quiet on weekdays but attracts lots of visitors on weekends. I am always surprised the structures are still standing. The porches sag and are supported by long 2x4 poles. The entire block of buildings lean and I wonder if the collapse of one would set off a domino effect.