If it's Good Enough for Kandinsky....

"Let's Do Lunch"
30" x 22" watercolor, 2006

"Sea Battle"
Wassily Kandinsky

Kathy Cartwright, author of one of Donna Zagotta's blogs to watch this year, has an interesting discussion of Kandinsky's book, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art." So I thought it would be fun to resurrect an old painting from 2006 when I took Mike Bailey's class "Watercolor Beyond the Obvious" for the first time. In the course of the class on design, we used the same subject matter to explore the various elements of design in 20 full-sheet paintings. Midway through the course, Mike made an assignment of viewing the works by famous artists. I found that I especially liked Matisse, but I liked this painting by Kandinsky. Somehow I am missing the point, because I find the painting joyful, and let's face it, there is nothing joyful about war. That didn't stop me from doing my own joyful version on a more mundane topic. The still life elements are in there, including a bowl, a spatula, and others. Mike was tickled pink with this one and said, frame it!

This painting sold in 2009 at my Open Studio.

Art Events - Lots Going On!

Framed plein air art for SVOS

More SVOS pieces ready and hanging

Mike Bailey addresses WBTO attendees

Mostly I've been working on Silicon Valley Open Studios preparatation. Framing, hanging, considering how to display the work, meeting with my Southside Art Club for final preparations, sending out e-mail invitations and physical post cards, and making lists. I was very excited to find that one of the official flyers features work by my friend Alison Turner, who will be showing her work at my home with me! Take the link on her name and view her "Different Strokes" in the upper left of the flyer. Alison does some very creative and unique work based mainly on her love of the outdoors and her travels.

Monday several of the Southside Art Club attended the final class of Mike Bailey's Watercolor Beyond the Obvious because Diane Martarano, the other artist showing her work at my home, just completed the class. On that day each artist has their 5 minutes of fame when they lay out all 20 of their full-sheet paintings. Attendees view the paintings, the artist speaks about the art, and Mike says a few words about each artist. In the photo we are having the potluck lunch, an attractive and delicious affair hosted by Karen Druker, my fellow SCVWS workshop chairwoman. WBTO is a class sponsored by Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society. Check out our offerings here and sign up for a future workshop.

Back to Open Studio prep. Apologies for my limited presence in the blog world.

Young woman in France

"Horsewoman"
Monpazier, France
Elegant Writer Pen and brush loaded with water
10 minutes

Friday I both coordinate and take Myrna Wacknov's portrait class hosted by the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society. We are instructed to bring digital photos of an elderly person, a young adult, and a child with specific orientations. So I've been searching through photos for some candid shots, and having quite a time finding any. I found this young woman in a photo I took in a town square in Montpazier, France, when I was there with Mike Bailey's group. Myrna was also there. A contingent of horse people walked their steeds into the square and tied their horses, so I snapped a couple photos. This one is a profile with a smooth face, so I might well be able to work with the image.

I've been under the weather and trying to get healthy for the class on Friday. No sketching yesterday, but I did this one this morning.

A Big Art Weekend

Some of my 2009 plein air art on display

Progressive Painting
(c) Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society

"Jamie 1"
Vine charcoal
10-minute sketch
1/9/201

The Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society held it's New Year's Party, the second I've attended. Bob joined me and he was such a help in the setup. We had a fabulous time mingling over appetizers, viewing plein air paintings and sketchbooks, enjoying a marvelous potluck, doing a painting exchange, and winning prizes in support of an art project for children. I was on the decorating committee and worked with fellow artist, Wendy, to put together centerpieces for the Asian New Year Themed party. It was the year of the tiger -- many paper lanterns, chinese takeout boxes, gold coins, chopsticks, fortune cookies, two stuffed tigers, and a wonderful handmade dragon went into celebrating the the Year of the Tiger. I enjoyed seeing many of my art friends, including Mike Bailey and his beautiful wife, and artists who went to France on Mike's 2007 Dordogne trip.

Please forgive the quality of these pictures -- I have my new camera out being repaired at the moment. I displayed several of my plein air paintings from our lovely outings throughout 2009 along with many by other artists. Those are artists's sketch books in the foreground. I participated in the progressive painting. There were two done and this one has some of my strokes buried among the layers. We all added watercolor to the gessoed boards. Then two very accomplished artists, Karen Wong, and Jane Ferguson, pulled them together. They did a fabulous job of turning these paintings into lovely works of art. The one above was completed by Jane. Two lucky winners took the progressive paintings home all matted and framed. I was very happy to receive a wonderful watercolor by our SCVWS Webmaster, Marion Podolski in the art exchange. One of the highlights of our raffle were three paintings donated by two nationally known artists, Jane Hofstedter and Myrna Wacknov. I sure was hoping to win one, but I was not that lucky.

Tomorrow I will be coordinating Myrna's demo for SCVWS. If you are in the area, these demos are free and held at Hoover Historic Theater in San Jose from 1:30 to 4:00. I am so excited about the upcoming workshop with Myrna. No doubt you will get to see some of what I do starting Friday.

Finally, I had to do my daily sketch, so I grabbed a photo of Bob's daughter, Jamie, from her wedding in April. She was crouched over her tiny grandmother on the dance floor. Grandma is a in her late 80s and just loves to dance. I almost captured the expression of fun on Jamie's face. I see the proportions of the body are off a bit -- oh well, that's how we improve our drawing.

One Year Birthday of My Blog

California Cuisine
Watercolor
22" x 30"

This is the first birthday for my blog, which I created on January 3, 2009. I am reposting a piece that I did during Mike Bailey's "Watercolor Beyond the Obvious" for a special reason. This piece is one of my featured pieces of art on the Silicon Valley Open Studios website. On New Year's Day the wife of a friend saw it while attending our New Year's Open House and purchased it on the spot! I was very pleasantly surprised as this is a purely social event. This piece has attracted attention from guests, and it's one of my favorites.

That was an especially nice end to a wonderful party where we hosted about a 100 people from all parts of our life -- dance, cycling, art, church, the gym, neighbors, and friends. Bob and I do major cooking. He's famous for his lasagna, carrot cake, and Chicago Beef, a dish from his native city. We made many other dishes as well. We had a great time kicking off the new year, but I am definitely behind in setting goals and doing art.

Stay tuned....

Christmas with the Plein Air Artists

Sylvia's View - San Jose

The Hillside from Sylvia's Deck

Sylvia Waddell is one of our two Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society's Plein Air leaders. Throughout the year, Sylvia and Jenny Tero plan weekly outings to various places around the Bay area and on the coast for our members. All you have to do is show up with your art materials and join in the fun.

Today Sylvia hosted a little Christmas plein air painting session and potluck. The day began dreary with fog that acted like fine rain. Thus, we were a small, but wonderful group of 5 gathered up in the East Foothills at Sylvia's home. Her place has decks front and back with spectacular views. Three of us opted to paint on the front deck where we had a panoramic view of the Santa Clara Valley, or "Valley of the Heart's Delight" as it was known when you saw fruit trees rather than homes on the valley floor. I chose to paint the scene of downtown with it's modest high rises. We are a city with a population of over a million, but in many ways we are a small town. The sky was overcast. I grabbed my artistic license, removed some trees and made the buildings look closer than they were . What is that saying about objects in your car mirror may be closer than they appear -- well, this is the reverse. As I was finishing the painting, the Santa Cruz Mountains began to emerge faintly in the distance, so I swiped them into the background with some blue paint.

By now it was noon and the winter sun had appeared, though with a haziness common to one of the shortest days of the year. Next, I turned myself 90 degrees to face the hillside. Without putting a single pencil mark on the paper, I painted in the hill, the trees, the house in the distance fronted by a vineyard, and the gnarled oak next to the deck. Kaaren told me that Mike Bailey would have said there was good use of repetition between the angles of the house roofs and the angles of the oak tree. I didn'plan that design element; it was intuitive. So having someone tell me that will help me be more conscious of my design choices next time. By then we had been joined by our two fellow artists who had been painting from the back of the house, and we finished up our session about 1 p.m. with a little show of our work in the livingroom. Sylvia maintains a Plein Air Muse blog, so you will likely see her posting her lovely work sometime soon. She is a wonderful watercolorist, and she does fabulous drawings using pens or graphite. Sylvia specializes in pet portraits.

Then it was time for our group to savor our potluck: chili with lots of surprise vegetables, a beautiful green salad, a Waldorf salad, bread, cheese, crackers, fruit, butter cookies, and chocolate bar cookies. A perfect day. I then drove to the community center to grab a few dances with Bob at the Thursday afternoon ballroom dance session. Now I must begin to prep for my Thursday night art group's Christmas gathering this evening at my home. Will we have time to paint?

"Birthday Memories"

"Birthday Memories, 2009"
11" x 14"
Collage, Watercolor, and Acrylic

As I was opening my gifts, mostly delivered from Amazon as we are a bi-coastal family, I was taken with the wrapping paper in lovely contrasting colors of blue and orange. One piece was blue with writing on one side and beige on the reverse. I decided I would recycle some of the interesting paper items into a piece of art commemorating my birthday 2009. One of my gifts is Betsy Dillard Stroud's wonderful "Painting from the Inside Out" given to me by son, Jeff. Inspired by "Everything but the Kitchen Sink" and recalling our wonderful workshop, I devised a compositional sketch centered around an orchid from a corsage that Bob gave me.

Let's call this experimental, as I don't know, nor do I care, if there is a right way to approach a piece like this. I drew my design on 300 pound watercolor paper, cut the collage pieces, and adhered them to the paper with mat medium as I learned from Gerald Brommer. When the base layer was dry, I painted the orchid in watercolor. I then began applying acrylics with a brush and stamping with acrylics to pull the background together. I found that I deviated from my design somewhat, responding to the image as it developed.

When I took Mike Bailey's 10-week Watercolor Beyond the Obvious workshop, I found that the process featured recently in Watercolor Artist magazine pushed me toward creating geometric shapes. I attribute this penchant to my engineering gene that guided my work life. By golly, that is what is emerging here as well.

I included elements that recall special moments, relationships, adventure, and where I am at this time in my life. The orchid represents my loving relationship with Bob, the gift wrap recalls my two wonderful grown sons, and Bob's little note on the Amazon gift card validates my role as artist. A piece of the 17-Mile Drive brochure provided directions on our bike ride to Carmel, and brings back memories of our cross-USA tandem bicycle ride in 2008. The coffee sleeves from a local Pacific Grove coffee shop take me back to several wonderful restaurants and cafes where we dined. The spiral pattern for growth and squares for stability are part of a stamp that I carved relating to my life. The rectangular decorative stamp reminds me of other parts of the world that I've been privileged to visit. One can say a lot about their life on a quarter sheet of watercolor paper

Brommer Workshop Recap

St. Michel, the Dordogne, France
Collage and watermedia

"Puente Nuevo"
Ronda, Spain
Collage and watercolor

"Two for the Road"
Beginning phase of a montage of my bicycle ride across the USA
Collage and watercolor

The week was so busy that I did not even have time to post the final three days of the workshop. We had a wonderful time. I felt like a kid again with my matte medium, gesso, pens, rice paper, and paints. I also was humbled by the beautiful work turned out by my colleagues in the workshop. Jerry said this one of the two most accomplished groups of artists that he had had in his workshops over the years. Privately he told me that several were way beyond needing a workshop, but of course creative people love to learn new ways of working and thinking. Take this link (Myrna's name) to see the work done by Myrna Wacknov during the workshop, so good that Jerry needed a piece for his collection. Myrna teaches many workshops nationwide, is an award-winning artist, and has been featured in popular art magazines.

Jerry at 82 is just as excited about art as he was as a child. He keeps learning new things (for example, that gesso can be applied successfully to a wet collage) and pushes his experimentation. He is humble and inspirational. He kept giving us pearls of wisdom, and I enjoyed his stories of many of the famous artists we admire who have been his friends. He also gave me his full-sheet demo painting that I will treasure, though Jerry did not have time to complete the detail and darks over his underpainting.

The pieces I show here were done on days 3, 4 and 5. To be successful, I would need to redo them. I've said before that my engineering mind is very literal and it takes me a while to apply what I learn in a creative way. I will explore this medium in the coming months as I really love the textured surfaces and the effects we achieved. Each piece was supposed to maintain separation between shape and line. The piece on Day 3 is from a snapshot I took in the Dordogne, while on a Mike Bailey art vacation in 2007. We built up the surface by applying rice papers with pieces of brown paper bag for the dark values. We drew into the wet collage and added paint. Applying white gouache does some really interesting things to the surface.

Day 4 I completed the bridge in Ronda, Spain, that I visited in 1989. Ronda is one of the "white towns" in Andalusia. This bridge is the newest of the three bridges that have spanned the gorge. The first was built by the Romans, the second by the Arabs, and third is the "new" bridge built by the occupants of the town in the 1700's. New is relative. As we stood on the bridge, we could see remnants of the two older bridges hundreds of feet below us. I struggled with this painting and in the final 15 minutes before critique, I got a suggestion from Jerry to apply gesso over parts I did not like and rework them. I worked furiously and Jerry was amazed that I pulled the iron out of the fire in those few minutes.

Day 5 is just the beginning stages of a complex exploration of a theme, in my case my bicycle ride across the USA in 2008. The top 1/3 of the page is picture that embodies the theme, and the bottom 2/3rds will be filled with small line drawings with color and images of items related to the theme. I selected an image from the middle of the country, where we were treated like royalty, tiny Woodbine, Iowa. The L stands for Lincoln Highway, the first highway to be completed across the USA. The old service station had been turned into an internet cafe by the junior high science teacher and his wife. They love to take pictures of people touring the country in front of the mileage to two major East and West Coast cities.

We were instructed to collage the entire surface, let it dry, add a thin layer of diluted gesso, let it dry, and then work on that surface. As we worked, we could add more collage, more gesso, paint, photographs, pieces of related paper, whatever. Eventually, I would add a border of darker color around the edge to organize the collection. At critique, I was especially fond of a piece done by Jean D. who collaged using various old documents (or copies of them) and then had a male figure walking into the documents. A serendipitous smearing of the ink on the figure created the most wonderful results. To me it certainly suggested the past.

Jerry's approach, with any piece, is to do some planning, but he never knows exactly how the piece will turn out, very reassuring to me. He lets what's happening on the surface inform subsequent steps in the process.

The workshop went well administratively, my first time to coordinate one for the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society. Bob and I especially enjoyed getting to know Jerry and his wife, Georgia, first at home, then at two subsequent dinners, and a final drive to the airport. They are such wonderful people. Jerry says that we are changed with each experience we have in workshops. I can't wait to take that change to a new level.

I have a few more obligations and then in the next few days I will be checking out what I've missed from my fellow bloggers.

Gerald Brommer Workshop - Day 1

"Carmel Cypress Trees"

"Cinque Terre Wildflowers"

Italy

The workshop I am coordinating is "From Line and Shape to Complex Surfaces." Today Gerald Brommer explained that we should treat the two elements of design, line and shape, as independent of each other. We should not be outlining the shape, nor should we be filling in the shape we've created. Both would look like a coloring book. Instead, we either put down shapes in light to mid-tone values and then draw our image over the shapes, or we draw our image and add shapes. We finish with some overpainting, but again avoid filling in the lines with color. We were told not to erase anything. We could draw in pencil and then in ink, not following the pencil line exactly. We drew on quarter sheets from our own reference materials.

We selected one piece for critique (I actually did 3 quarter sheets and started a fourth). I choose Cinque Terre wildflowers, done from a photo taken when pal, Joan, and I went to Italy for a watercolor workshop in Western Tuscany. First we spent a few days in a tiny town just south of the Cinque Terre, where we relaxed, hiked, and sketched. Gerri liked the piece and made two suggestions for improvement, which I haven't done yet -- balance the right corner with a small shape of strong color on the lower left, and add more line to the two plants that reach above the sea on the left. He was enthusiastic about my cypresses, though I didn't put it up for critique. Gerri is such a wonderful instructor, and loved by many. We have a fabulous group of people taking the class, including Myrna Wacknov, so it's really neat to see the art they produce. It's also like old home week for my France trip in 2007 with Mike Bailey -- Myrna, Carrie, and Lisa are all in the workshop! We ended the day tearing pieces of rice paper, staining them with various shades of a couple colors, and allowing them to dry overnight. Tomorrow we begin the collage process.

Yesterday's demo went well, the first I've coordinated. The room was full, probably 75 to 100 observers. Gerri said he couldn't demonstrate collage on the spot and what we would do in class were small pieces. So I brought him a full sheet of Arches 140 lb. paper and a support so he could demo his design and painting process. Like all masters, he made it look so easy, and the crowd loved it. Gerri gives you permission to do anything in art -- no, a watercolor must not all be transparent; yes, you can use opaque white and colors; you can move things around; you can eliminate what you don't want and add something you do. You can do many variations from one simple sketch or photo.

I am learning the mechanics of being a coordinator, quite a bit of work as we provide a nice series of snack morning and afternoon during the workshop and for the demo on Sunday afternoon. So far, I've been to Costco twice, and the farm stand once. Then there are the various vagaries of the locks for kitchen, water supply, classroom, restrooms, and atrium. All is going smoothly and I am having fun. I have a terrific assistant, Irene, who has jumped right in on setup, cleanup, and ordering and picking up the instructors lunch.

Plein Air at Cooper-Garrod Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains

"Fine Aging at the Winery"
14" x 10"

Yesterday I painted with the plein air group of the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society at the Cooper Garrod Winery on Mount Eden Road. What a fascinating old winery. It's not all dolled up and spiffed up. There are many old buildings and barns with stables. Horse classes were in progress while we were there - they have a very active and large stable.

I was very taken by this old Ford convertible with rumble seat parked under the cover attached to the old winery tasting room. The air long gone from the tires, parked on a tilted surface, the old car was doing some fine aging. I sat with Dick, a very accomplished artist who sells his work in a Campbell gallery. Later we compared images. How different -- mine is pretty close up with the car as the focal point and Dick's is a wonderful scene showing the building and the car. I think of Mike Bailey -- it's not about the subject, it's about the design. I would love to see Dick's finished piece. I had to finish mine last night while painting with the South Side Art Club at my home. What a nice time we always have on Thursday evenings. We've painted together since the mid-nineties.

Tonight I will be participating in the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society's "Anything Goes" show at the Elizabeth Norton Gallery in the Pacific Art League Building on Ramona Street, just one block off University Avenue. I wrote about hanging this show in an earlier post. The pieces are truly high quality and I recommend the show to all in driving distance. There are 48 artists with three pieces of art each, so you have much to see while enjoying wine and nibbles. We are also part of the Friday Night Art Walk, so come by if you can.

I've received a couple blog awards and due to a hectic schedule have not had time to thank both Claire McFeeley and Mhega Chhatbar for their thoughtfulness.

Thoughts on painting and poster art

"Summer Vases"
29" x 20"
(c) Mary Paquet

I finally am back to painting, but I don't have something finished to show you here. "Summer Vases" is a full sheet painting done in a Mike Bailey Workshop. It was the last of the series and emphasizes shape, color, and line. The painting was done quickly and lacks perfection. I rather like the freshness I achieved. At the moment, this painting is hanging in my livingroom. I plan to buy frames when I see a good sale and put up some more art in the house. People who come to our home always enjoy seeing the art. I plan to rotate the pieces more frequently.

I have a bunch of paintings in my head right now and must really get to work to set them free. Two are from Memorial Day and some are related to the Paquet Farm. I took some candid shots at the railroad station in San Luis Obispo, and they all have great potential, but the one I want to paint is only in my mind. We'll see if I can do people without reference material.

I mentioned that the Paquet Farm is celebrating its centennial as part of the Barre Heritage Festival in Barre, VT. I was asked to design a poster. I had to keep it very simple with requirements for black and one color. I also am not an illustrator and don't know the software that would be ideal. With a deadline of a week, there was not time to learn. I ended up using one of my paintings of the farm, and I removed the color. The view is known to everyone in the area. The family is happy with the results. You can see the poster by pasting this link into your browser:
http://www.barreheritagefestival.com/
From this page, take the link on the right side for Paquet Farm 100th Anniversary to see the poster. The posters are going into print this week and I am promised one for my archives.

More pictures from Open Studios

"Dordogne Sunflower"

Publish Post

In the summer of 2007, I went to the Dordogne region of France with Mike Bailey and a small group of artists. One day, surrounded by greenery, we were challenged to paint all day without using green. Certainly I enjoyed the test of my imagination when I painted a sunflower in the field behind Pettit Rousset. This matted piece will be available at my Open Studios on May 9 and 10. The piece is more lively. I can't seem to adjust the hue and saturation correctly.

Today my artist friend Alison and I went to three Open Studios in Los Altos. We had a nice time seeing the latest art at the Nancie Crowley and Karen Druker sites. I've followed Nancie's art for about 15 years and I know Karen personally from the France workshop with Mike. Seeing how other artists set up their Open Studio is helpful. The third place is a gallery, and frankly, I thought visiting the homes and/or studio space of the artists much more satisfying. We saw lots of excellent art, and I came home with some very nice greeting cards.

House under Framing Seige

Framing Table "aka" Dining Table

"Nepenthe Christmas"
11" x 14"

Here you can see part of the mess created by our matting and framing activity as I get ready for Silicon Valley Open Studios on May 9 and 10. The adjoining livingroom is equally disheveled. We are making good progress and might even finish today. Fortunately, Bob is really good at cutting mats, so he cuts and I frame. We have good tools; I use a power stapler and portable drill in the framing process. Bob uses a Logan Mat Cutter.

I've been going through my stash of painting sselecting the works I want to feature at Open Studios. Every Christmas Bob and I spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at Big Sur Lodge. On Christmas Day we treat ourselves to a lovely meal at Nepenthe, an iconic restaurant developed by the Lolly family in the 60's during the hippy era. The family still owns the restaurant and were featured recently in the San Jose Mercury News. The restaurant sits high over the Pacific with a southern orientation over the coast. Mountain ridges meet the sea and recede into the distant view. The restaurant is surrounded by lovely old gnarled trees. This year, Bob set his new camera, a Christmas gift from me, on our table and took a photograph. I loved the reflections, so I developed this painting from it. You see the distant view through the window and the reflections of the greenery on the table. The bench cushions look colorful and add some abstraction to the painting. I love the shapes in this painting, and as I discovered in Mike Bailey's class, I tend toward being a shape painter when designing works for which I have no reference.

Cards are very popular items at the Open Studios. I have some prints being made now that I will adhere to the Photomount cards I ordered from ASW. I also want to make up "story cards" for the framed works, in which I will explain why I painted this particular work. This is a suggestion from Jeff Bramschreiber of University Arts on Meridian Avenue who taught marketing your work at "SVOS University." I am quite impressed with the organization that runs Open Studios. If you are in the Santa Clara Valley/Santa Cruz area, check your library or other public places for the Mapguides that give samples of artists's work and maps to guide you to the studios.

A busy week

"Onion"
Charcoal and conte

The post-wedding week has been very busy with cleanup, gift transport, ballroom dancing, teaching cycling on a 50-miler, and preparing for Open Studios. Plus, I've had some computer problems, which Bob has worked on for me. Nice having my own system administrator.

Our drawing instructor, Bob Semans, returned from Washington, DC, with good news that he received the People's Choice award at the Portrait Society of America International Competition at their annual conference. We are very proud of him. He set us back to work on simpler shapes using some onions. I chose to do just one and use just charcoal and conte, rather than pastel, to focus on the values without the distraction of color. However, the color is very seductive and I will likely go back to pastels next week.

My house is in a upheaval with frames, matboard, and art pieces all over the livingroom and diningroom. Bob will begin cutting mats tomorrow and I will be doing the framing. I've been sending out invitations to Open Studios and stopping by local shops to put out flyers. I hope to get back to painting tomorrow. I've been reading a wonderful book I bought, Nita Leland's Confident Color. I have learned a lot from my first pass. Now I want to go back and do the exercises, especially making color wheels for various pallettes and experiment with color schemes. Mike Bailey has some paintings in this book; he is a real master of color. Mike brought these very paintings into our class when I took Watercolor Beyond the Obvious; so I easily spotted his work in the book. Incidentally, SCVWS will be offering Mike's WBTO class again in the fall if you care to enroll. http://www.scvws.org

Work related to art

"California Cuisine"

The business of art is keeping me busy the last few days. I am in the process of preparing for the Silicon Valley Open Studios in May. I will be hosting 5 other artist at my home on the weekend of May 9 and 10. "California Cuisine" is one of my pieces that I feature on the SVOS website. You can check out artists here: http://www.svos.org/search.php

Yesterday I went through my artwork to select pieces that I want to mat and frame. Some pieces I will simply bag as is or bag with mat and backing. Actually the process is rather fun. I squirrel away much of what I paint, and it's pleasing to get out everything and look at the body of work and select the strongest pieces. I also spent some time lining up Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society workshops for 2012. Can you believe that we've filled 2010, 2011, and much of 2012? I love talking with the excellent artists we engage. You can check out upcoming workshops here: http://www.scvws.org/workshops/wkshp2009.php and http://www.scvws.org/workshops/20010.php

I created "California Cuisine" as part of the series I did during a Mike Bailey workshop. Mike just pulls out all the stops on himself and the participants. This is one of 20 full-sheet paintings that evolved from a simple still life that featured a bottle of olive oil, a bowl, a spatula, an egg, and a jar. Those elements are in this piece with some embellishments. I love California Poppies. They conjure up warm sunshine, fresh air, garden smells, still-green hillsides, and spring in Santa Clara Valley.

Elements of design

" Frenchman with Line"

A Myrna Wacknov challenge

Several months ago Myrna Wacknov had some challenges on her blog based on a photo that she took during a Mike Bailey workshop in the Dordogne. Thus this picture is purely an experiment and the Frenchman image belongs to Myrna. She had us work with the Line element of design. This one I did on Tyvec using acrylic paints. Doing experiments is so freeing -- it gives me permission to fail so I don't worry about ruining my painting.

South American art

"La Mujer de Gaucho" watercolor sketch

Ushuaia, Argentina

Las Mujeres de Gaucho photo

My charcoal sketch

I managed to do a bit of sketching in graphite, charcoal, and watercolor, while traveling almost 5000 miles by cruise ship around the lower latitudes of South America. Ushuai, Argentina, on the Grande Isla de Tierra del Fuego, is the southernmost city in the world and a frequent staging area for expeditions to Antartica some 800 miles away. We took a shore tour that included a trainride at the end of the world, a gaucho show, and a visit to the Tierra del Fuego National Park.

We were surprised at the quality of the gaucho show which was in a rustic barn with a visibly amateur stage setting. However, the young folks were anything but amateur in their ability to perform. I took the snapshot of the women, which is not very clear, but good enough for reference materials. A few days later I used the viewer on my camera to do a charcoal sketch, selecting the woman in red as my subject. I then created a grid, which is straight in person I might add (pardon the camera skew), and redrew my composition on a watercolor pad. I did this painting as a sketch for further development in my studio. Interestingly, you might agree with me that the charcoal sketch is a better rendition. Note the positioning of the body and head. In fact, I want to improve upon the charcoal sketch to nail the dancer's body mechanics. That's why I like to do multiple sketches and paintings.

Now that I am home, I plan to do a series based on the sketch where I vary elements of design as taught by Mike Bailey and Myrna Wacknov. (Check out Myrna's blog for her latest workshop slide show to see the results of her instruction this week. Fascinating!) I also have several wonderful source pictures for gaucho men for future reference.

Tomorrow I will share a few little sketches I did in Buenos Aires.

France and Sunflowers

Sunflower at Petite Rousset

While staying at wonderful Petite Rousset near Eymet in the Dordgone region of France with Mike Bailey's in 2007, we were surrounded by fields of sunflowers. That summer Europe had lots of rain, but our group was blessed with almost non-stop sunshine. The sunflowers were in full bloom when usually they would be past their prime. I had fun painting this one. Mike has some wonderful paintings on his blog from that trip, a couple of which feature the amazing fields of sunflowers.

Experimenting in a workshop

What a busy week. I attended the Life Drawing session sponsored by the Los Gatos Museum of Art on Tuesday afternoon. I want to work a bit more on one of the charcoal pieces and then I will post it to the blog.

I did more work on Open Studios, which brought to mind the experimental work I had done on design at Mike Bailey’s “Watercolor Beyond the Obvious” workshop. Mike has participants take a simple still life, changing the elements of design through 20 full sheet paintings over 10 weeks. We did all the work at home and each class was devoted to an hour’s lesson on a design element and then a critique of each person’s paintings. Part of the class emphasizes looking at the masters. Mike liked “Let’s do lunch,” done after studying some of Kandinsky's work. The second one is “My Matisse” which was painted on watercolor paper primed with acrylic mat medium.

This class is being offered again this year and there might be some openings remaining in the Tuesday class, which meets in the morning. Mike is a master instructor who also teaches at UC Santa Cruz. He is amazingly enthusiastic, and you are never bored! Mike has been featured in a number of art magazines. You can check out schedules on the watercolor society’s website: www.scvws.org. You can check out Mike's work by going to the blog link on the side panel.