Rode my bike up the ridge above San Anselmo looking for something to paint. For me, painting Mt. Tam feels a bit like a Marin artist cliche and I usually try to avoid it, but this morning it looked very impressive in its veil of smoke from the fires in Sonoma and Napa.
Drove over to China Camp after work to paint the smoke from Napa and Sonoma. It made for a rather dramatic sunset as in blew in toward Marin. Good luck to all the family’s and fire crews in the path of the fires. Stay strong.
I was supposed to cut down brush but instead I found the chaos lovely and picked up my brush instead. I excel at being both lazy and productive at the same time.
Just looking down my driveway
I took the boys for a swim and was able to get a quick oil sketch in.
I ran out of panel boards to paint on, oh the joys of social distancing, finally made some more and am back at it. Here’s an oil sketch of a bush in my yard. (Nerium oleander)
This afternoon I drove to the family ranch to enjoy a social distancing mother’s day BBQ. Emerging from self isolation I found just seeing family in person to be a great joy. After lunch I stood off to the side drinking a cold ale and painted our rickety old barn. How this pile of dry fuel wrapped in a thick blanket of kindling survived the Kincaid fires is a mystery to us all.
My painting kit is light and small enough now that I can fit it all into a back pack. Today I rode my gravel bike out to Alpine Lake and painted a tree next to the side of the water.
I made this oil sketch back in February during a lunch break. It was a holiday for most people so there were no cars parked near Lucasfilm which was rather unusual. Looking West from the east end of General Kennedy Ave. in San Francisco, CA
I painted the unkept hillside to the south of my house from my living room window. Gravity is slowly pulling this little staircase down the slope. I probably should do something to fix it before it rolls off a small cliff and into my car. That sounds like a lot of work to fix though so instead I’ll just ignore it for a little longer and keep painting.
I hand ground and mixed the green paint from some Gamblin Chromium Oxide Green Pigment.
