Fred Baca Park

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

Here's another digital painting from New Mexico, a quick sketch of Taos Mountain from Fred Baca Park, a little neighbourhood park in Taos that I frequently took my dog to.  

Pedernal with Cottonwoods

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

Here's a plein air digital sketch I did last fall, facing that famous Cerro Pedernal from Ghost Ranch, just west of Abiquiu in New Mexico.  My perspective was not far from the cottage that Georgia O'Keeffe rented with a direct view of Pedernal, so this would have been her view as well.

The Sun Feels So Good

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

I'm going to be posting some digital paintings from my year in New Mexico on this blog until I've finished creating a separate blog to house them.  This is a digital painting I did of a sculpture by the same name on the compound where I was living just north of Taos.  

Backyard in Winter, Casa Azul

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

After having spent months in transition, I have finally settled (for now) in the vicinity of Arroyo Seco, a little town just a few miles north of Taos, New Mexico.  It has been, and continues to be, a challenging time for me but not without its plusses.  The landscape, for one, is extraordinary and begs to be painted.  Also, I am happily enrolled in a painting class at the University of New Mexico with a fantastic teacher and artist, Sarah Stolar, which marks my first foray into formal art education.  It is pushing me in new directions which I hope will soon be reflected in my art.  

In the meantime, here's a digital sketch of the view from my place of Taos Mountain, the outline of which is obscured by cloud cover.   There will be paintings of that mountain to come.

Bodega Bay View from Doran Bluff

iPad art, 10" x 14"

Another perspective on another day at Bodega Bay, this digital sketch was done from the opposite end of the bay.  I had to work faster than ever, as it appears my dog is losing her patience whenever I whip out my iPad and lose myself in it.  This one took about 5 minutes, a record for me!

Take 'im Away, Baldy!

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

A digital bird painting, this one a fantasy of mine.  I thought it apropos for America's symbolic protector -- the bald eagle -- to do the job.

Gretchen's Silver

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

For a change of pace, this is a practice piece, painting reflections on a metal bowl in this little digital still life based on a Gretchen Hancock painting.  I'm a big fan of her work.  I don't do a lot of still life painting, not because it doesn't interest me -- it does; but there's only so many hours in the day and something's gotta give . . .

A Little Birdie Told Me

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

Here's another cartoon I thought I'd share.  The color yellow is fraught with meaning, both positive and negative, depending on the context.  To name a few on the positive side, it connotes joy, optimism, hope, happiness, summer, and sunshine, while on the negative, it can signify cowardice, deceit, dishonesty, danger, betrayal, and warning.  Context is everything.  

The Cheese Factory at Dusk on the 4th of July

iPad painting, 14" x 10"

Like many dogs, my dog is terrified of fireworks, so we high-tailed it to the countryside in West Marin on the evening of July 4th to get a bit of respite from the boom booms going on in town.  We stopped at the Cheese Factory, which was nearly deserted, so we had the whole place to ourselves.  The scene was incredibly peaceful and exquisite, complete with a nearly full moon over the pond and all the various colors of foliage shown to best advantage and with a fog bank coming up over the trees.  I am itching to revisit this scene at the same time, from 7:30 - 9:00 pm, to do a plein air sketch.  

Le President des Pirouettes

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

Just doin' my bit.  I had to squish him in a little box.  Feel much better now.

Great White Egret

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

I've been working on several paintings that feature birds as a subject.  I often visit Ellis Creek, a local bird sanctuary, and seem to be getting more obsessed with them by the day.  The colors and sheer variety of bird species in the world are simply astounding, most of which I was almost entirely unaware until recently.  Due to all the egrets I've studied lately at Ellis Creek, I was able to do this digital sketch from memory.

Wisterian Path

iPad painting, 14" x 10"

We're not quite out of spring yet, although it feels that way where I live in Sonoma County, with temps reaching into the mid-80's already.  It has me longing for a shady path like this to walk my dog, and sit for a bit to take it all in.

Study in Orange and Green

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

This sketch was done as an experiment in complementaries, and since I think about landscapes so much, it seemed a foregone conclusion that I would dream up a scene like this.  I do like the colors, though.  It reminds me a bit of the English countryside, perhaps somewhere in Devon I once passed through.

Wings of the Dove

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

Thinking about birds again, here's a quick little digital sketch of a dove in flight, with the light illuminating its feathers.

San Francisco Bay

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

This was a quick sketch I did the other day from the Sausalito Ferry after a power outage in San Francisco had caused me to abandon my desk at 9:00 a.m. and head back to Marin County.  It was a brilliant day, but a bit disorienting to find myself on a ferry boat when I was expecting to spend it tied to a computer in a high rise building in downtown SF.

Inside of a Tulip

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

I love gazing at the insides of flowers, where they store their jewels.  Tulips are especially provocative in that way, with their petals curved in a protective manner around the center.

Wild Irises

iPad painting, 10" x 10"

This was painted from memory, an impressionist take on a large patch of bearded irises I spotted on a neighborhood walk.  The flowers are explosive this year due to the prodigious amounts of rain we have gotten, with more rain on the way.

Spring Scene, Eastside Petaluma

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

With this loose digital sketch, I tried to capture the pillowy lushness of spring growth in a field of weeds and mustard flowers on the Eastside of Petaluma. 

Pond Study at the Cheese Factory

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

This digital sketch was done the other day on a stopover with my dog at the Cheese Factory in rural Marin County, a favorite spot for us both.

Bodega Bay on a Sunny Day

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

This was a quick little 10-minute sketch done the other day while on a walk with the pups, looking south from Cheney Creek Trail at Bodega Bay.  I was lucky to get even 10 minutes before they started bugging me to get off the bench.  The upside is that it forces me to work really fast, which makes for good practice.