Ripples in the water

Here are some more postcards. My narcissus and the Huntington's duck.

Here are some good things I found this week: An animal called axolotl on the pages of the Sierra Club magazine.
A brilliant dog food commercial.

Postcards from Southern California

These guys are from the Huntington Gardens at the Huntington Library in San Marino. I would definitely go there if I were a tourist. If I were a tourist in Pasadena, I would also visit the Norton Simon Museum, but I'd limit my viewing to the modern art gallery. Then I'd go outside into the bright daylight and stroll across the Colorado Bridge for a taste of history, engineering, and some real fine views. I might or might not visit the Gamble House, drive past big houses on Oakland, Grand and Orange Grove, or walk around CalTech. I would take the Echo Mountain hike to extend the history, engineering and view themes, and get some exercise. I would eat at Burger Continental, because it's a little unusual, and just screams local flavor. I'd send postcards from the Huntington Gardens.

Chairs

I painted two more postcards. I realized that in a modest-sized house, I have sixteen different chairs, and a total of twenty two chairs, since they are not all different. That does not include the chairs on the front porch, the backyard, the garage and the basement, which are many more. There is good diversity among chairs - infinite variations on a simple and good idea. Does a picture of a single empty chair suggest something?

On another topic, for which very regrettably I have no picture, it was a great day for birds in the yard. Other than the typical visitors: sparrows, jays, crows, mourning doves, hummingbirds, and
house finches, I saw a gold finch and six band tailed pigeons.

Random Pictures

Part of the problem is it's getting tougher to come up with pictures, and as I see it the pictures are the whole point of this blog. Although you could stick around for my writing. I have to unframe and photograph paintings, I have go through the storage space, and most of all, I have to paint more. Which I have no objection to at all, except the time it takes. While we're all waiting for that to happen, here's one more postcard I painted for the Strathmore/San Gabriel Fine Arts Association send-postcards-to-servicemembers project, and three pages from sketchbooks: my shoes about a week ago, a young relation at Mt. Palomar about three years ago, and a leaf from near Julian on Mother's Day weekend two years ago. I also thought about spreading these pictures out over two or three days, but why make things easy?

Painting Postcards

I painted these tonight, in part because I didn't have something else to post here. But it's all for the good. I'm pretty happy with them, and I'm having some wine from the open bottle to celebrate.

Apparently, some of my loved ones have been recruiting blog readers for me. That, in response to my expressions of discouragement (another kind of whine). I started the blog because I had tried a stodgy art website, and I wasn't all that happy with it. The blogger format shows the pictures better, and gives me a chance to postulate and ponder too. I kept a diary through my teens and twenties, and maybe I miss that sometimes.

I didn't think I was looking for attention. I wear dark colored clothes, and generally avoid recognition of any sort. I don't have a Facebook account. And yet I find myself caring whether or not people look at the blog. I find myself coveting comments, and while I haven't yet resorted to bribes or blackmail to get them, you may consider yourself warned.

More Postcards

A seagull from Santa Cruz. From that day at the boardwalk before the UCSC orientation. And Calvary Preschool (which I changed up a lot because I didn't like the way the building looked, but which I think was one of the two best preschools ever).

When I placed these side by side, it was only because they are both vertically oriented. Coincidentally, they both represent stages in the education of my younger son.

I really like the seagull, whose feet, believe it or not, actually were buried in the sand. On the Calvary painting, I moved the tree forward and forgot to move the shadow.

I feel I should tell you I haven't even come close to drawing daily. Don't know that any of my other resolutions, whatever they were, are faring better. Might be daily blogging is getting in the way. But I'll keep trying.

Goose and Abstraction

I'm more certain than ever that I want to do a large painting of white geese. I finally gave up on trying to think of things to paint on postcards, and went with a non-representational design.

I've never painted a true abstract. When I pondered it, starting a couple of years ago, I didn't know how I would come up with one. I've had a couple of ideas: one is to paint a discreet and unrecognizable part of an object, which wouldn't really be an abstract, but it could pass as one. The other thought was to expand on the doodles I do especially while I'm on the telephone (research shows doodling aids in concentration). This is along those lines.

More Postcards

You may know that I and the other fine members of the San Gabriel Fine Arts Association are painting Strathmore postcards to send to troops overseas. It's fun painting the postcards because they are small and they don't take long. It's oddly challenging to think of what to paint, because (except one big fact) you don't know anything about the people who will receive them - who they are, where they're from, or what they like. So you just paint anything, and hope they like it. I've done a couple that are subjects I'm considering for bigger paintings. Some stuff that's just around my house. These two are from photographs I took in Yellowstone, that I just recently pulled out of my storage space to look at. I never thought of painting buffalo before, but I'm glad I did. They are just such massive shaggy icons of the American west.

You may want to come to the next meeting of the SGFAA on the evening of 1/21. There will be postcards there, painted and unpainted. There will be snacks. Alex Schafer is going to paint somebody. You may want to go to the Los Angeles Art Show 1/20 through 1/24 at the LA Convention Center. I went twice last year. It is so cool; it's like miles and miles of amazing art, of every stripe, all in one place. For variety, volume and proximity, it exceeds almost any gallery or museum experience.