dandelion seeds

dandelion seeds
Arches CP 300gsm 9" x 12". 1 hour.

as i continue to explore other painters' blogs, including the "painting a day" horde, it strikes me how much of the painting experience is left out.

my sister came and went for the weekend, and, as we use my studio as a guest house, all my supplies were folded up and packed into the sideboard for a few days. and they will stay there this week, because my sister and her two sons are coming through town again this weekend: my nephew is a freshman at uc davis and they will stop overnight on their way there. i have been painting out of a pan set, like philip pearlstein, and it is working out quite well.

during the same few days i completely rewrote the wikipedia article on watercolor painting, and it is now perhaps the best single page reference on the topic available on the web. perhaps next week i will get around to uploading illustrations.

william moore (linked at right) was kind enough to share his experience in managing a blog, and with his guidance i have streamlined the work a little more. i generally run with about a week's worth of paintings in the queue, so if a day or two goes by without painting i still have material to post. i tried uploading a week's worth of work at once, but found it tedious.

weather has been foggy lately. ironically, as my wife and i are choosing a contractor to put in solar panels, which should zero out our power bill and reduce our carbon footprint.

i have also been trying to recruit new models for portrait work, but so far my success has been limited. i expect it is a matter of making the right pitch in the right context, but i haven't found the formula that works.

oh, the painting. i was working on a portrait of my wife when these seeds blew into my studio from the open door. i chose a group that was resting on my dark wood table and, with a magnifying glass, painted them where they sat. the background is prussian blue, which gives a beautiful texture in the darker values; i painted the seeds as cutouts to give them the look of small umbrellas. i think this painting would work well in a larger format; i may do that.