This is just a quick and loose sketch based upon scenes from our Newport paintout day. I don’t know why, sometimes I like the fast and loose ones better than the ones I toil over for hours. But I just can’t bring myself to ‘dash off’ something I intend for a show. Which […]

California Farmhouse - Aprox 9″ x 12″ - watercolor
While I continue to work on my big painting (yes, I finally put brush to paper yesterday on that snowy white sheet) here is a painting I did a few weeks ago as a practice using warm and cool colors alternatively. The actual scene was rather lackluster […]

“Market Flowers” - watercolor on paper - About 8″ x 6″ - Fabriano Artistico 140# cold press
I’m working on a big painting project right now - a full sheet watercolor that incorporates most of the different techniques I regularly know and use and a few new ones. It’s an ambitious project and I’m dedicated […]

Casita Del Arroyo - 7.5 x 10 (cropped) in Raffine sketchbook
This weekend I’m working pretty intensely on a couple of paintings - still in the planning stages - so I’m posting this sketchbook page painted about ten days ago at the Casita Del Arroyo in Pasadena. You can just see the top of the […]

Lily Pond Sketch - a small portion of a water lily pond at Huntington Gardens - painted on location last Tuesday in my Raffine Sketchbook.
Most of the lilies were white but there was one plant that sported a magenta/alizarin colored bloom. I saw this exercise as a way to just capture some loose colorful […]

Cobb Estate - Hazy Morning 15″ x 22″ watercolor on Arches paper - half sheet
Today our paintout group returned to the Cobb Estate at the top of Lake Street in Pasadena where a light morning haze hung over the San Gabriels cast a veil of warm light over the scene. […]

Huntington Jacarandas - 9 x 12 - Raffine sketchbook

The Best Laid Plans of Artists oft go awry (to paraphrase Bobby Burns.) Wendee and I arrived at the Huntington today and before leaving we both checked the website and discovered that the only way one is permitted to paint in the gardens is if you have […]

“Blue Cove” 9 x 12 watercolor
A few things I was experimenting with: lost and found edges, limited color scheme, interlocking edges, oblique forms, use of reflections, using suggestive brushwork rather than painting every little leaf and bush, using strong value patterns and so on.
This afternoon I’m looking forward to a paintout at a local botanical […]

“Hollyhock expression” 9″ x 12″ watercolor
Here it is again, close to bedtime, and our several activities today have kept me from doing my daily painting. So this quick study of a hollyhock at least lets me get something in under the wire. There’s a time to be correct and botanical and a time […]

“Newport Saturday” - Plein Air watercolor painting - 17″ x 14″
A beautiful sunny Saturday found us at Newport, across the canal from Balboa Island. This is a view looking down the little pathway leading to the fun zone (note the ferris wheel in the distance.) This was my second painting of the […]