Tina's Jam

A beautiful and inspirational jar of jam from Malibu! Tomorrow morning I will open it and perhaps paint it as the level gets lower and lower! yum!

6x6

Prepare to Pie

Lots of fun painting these shiny things. Wish I could photograph the resulting shiny painting. I am still getting those little shiny speckles. Well, at least they are all in focus now that I thought to use the aperture priority setting on my camera. Sheesh.

6x6 oil

Tomato Family II

Gotta keep at these tomatoes! I love the little tomato and his mommy and daddy.

Vineyard Road

Too nice to stay inside today! All the vine leaves are beginning to turn, the sky is blue, the birds are singing....yay!

9x12

Tomato Family

Grrr! I have been having the WORST time photographing my paintings lately! Nothing but glare and little speckles! I guess it is part of my Bad Technology Month where the printer has started having tantrums and the tv is talking back. Now it is the camera which is giving me bad color and lots of glare. Stay tuned for more glaring errors....

Tinker Toys

These came in a much-used cardboard cylinder which included short and long sticks to put in the holes around the edges and in the middle. Then you could put them all together and make something. Probably terribly unsafe but the owner grew up with both eyes intact and a deep interest in making things.

Reflections on an Apple

These apples came off the tiny tree in our garden. They are Gala apples and they are very gala! I love rubbing them on my sweater to make them shiny. None of that wax stuff on home grown apples!

No Pears But A Pair Of Apples

I think our internet connection is finally fixed. While it has been down, I realize how much time I spend on line or just messing around. Not having the internet means more time to paint!

Fall Migration

Migration season at the lagoon. Zillions of birds wheeling and landing. Have to paint fast!
8x10

Can Can

Painted at Earthbound Farms in Carmel Valley. Lots of things to paint there but this can caught my eye. Great lighting and all the cool stuff in the background! yay!

8x10

Lightfighter Road

Wonderful clouds today and a though there was still a bit of haze in the air, you could see the mountains off in the distance. In the foreground, Route 1, the bike path, and the old train tracks that used to carry people from San Francisco to a fancy hotel in Monterey.

11x14

Big View, Small Van

This is the second demonstration painting. Painting from a photograph is a challenge: photos are too small to show that special element which attracted you to the site and also show way more stuff than you can ever deal with. For example: where did that blue van come from??? I like painting from real life where the more you look, the more you see!

14x18

Palmy Days

A house on Pine Street in Pacific Grove, CA. Loved the shadows on the garage and the big palm tree. Beautiful sunny day 75 degrees. Will have to go back there soon!

9x12

Looking to Lobos

Painted on Scenic Drive in Carmel looking toward Point Lobos where there are no wolves nowadays but there is ocean and cypress. Took our new dog, Molly, along to see if she would be a good painting dog. Yep. Lay there quietly while I did this!

8x10

Looking Away

This is the first of two demos I did last Friday. This one has cows. I was using a really big brush and before I knew it, I was finished. That's a tip!

9x12

Still Attached

A friend who has a bountiful apple tree gave me a bag of apples most of which went into a pie. This one, however, was so cool that I had to paint it!

6x8

Scenic Road

A very sunny day in Carmel! The boat was in just the right spot!

9x12

View Over Bernardus Vinyard

what was I thinking here?? However, I did get the intense blue of the mountain in the background...

8x10

An afternoon painting this time...done at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Labs. If I had only known that you could grow up and get a job playing around in tide pools, you would not be reading this blog! What a deal!

8x10

ps: I am going to have to do something about photographing my paintings! Everything comes out gray. Yuck. Why is this???

Garapatta Daze

This is a 14 x 18 painting I did for a demo at the Central Coast Art Association. 4 colors, big brush, 1 hour! The demo was at night and indoors so I used a photo. You don't really get much information from a photo but one can only try!

14 x 18

At Bernardus Vinyard

Beautiful sunny day! Birds munching on the grapes and getting tipsy in the trees and singing birdy drinking songs!

Sorry I have not posted in a while. Brought back a nasty cold & wheeze from the airplane. yuk. It did not help my paintings at all!

8x10

Another Maine painting. This one is basically a sketch and I painted it while looking through the screens on a screened in porch. (There are lots of mosquitos in Maine!)

9x12

Morning Sail

I have been away visiting the East Coast and Maine in particular which is why there haven't been any postings. On the island in Maine, there is no internet connection. Imagine that! Lots of time available to paint! This is a view toward two of the islands (The Crows) in the group of five called, naturally, Five Islands. My favorite place!

8x10

Barn Roof (Paicines Ranch)

Is this a fabulous barn roof or what! 6x8 sold

Seascape

Another painting from the Santa Cruz festival. For this one, we went to a resort called Seascape where they drove us and all our gear around in golf carts. What a treat!

11x14

Sailing

Cool view from Hopkins Marine Station on Monterey Bay. I am standing in a cement walled place which I think must be a seagull territory or nest area as they are wheeling overhead and making a huge racket the whole time. There are seagull feathers everywhere but no dirty bombs! The sailboat went by just at the right time!

9x12

View From the Old Farm

One of the paintings from the Santa Cruz plein air event. This won Judges Choice which was nice because the old farm is probably the last one in the area. It was bought by the city and will not become a development. Yay!

8x10

Save Me!

Another historic house from Pacific Grove. This one is really cool but is so neglected. I hope someone with money or building skills comes along to love and save this house and put back the little balcony around the cupola and restore the shutters up there! Look at the beautiful long windows and french doors! Fabulous! Up and at 'em folks! 2nd & Central in Pacific Grove, CA.

9x12

Mrs H. A. Maynard House 1889, Pacific Grove, CA

Yikes! I have been busy as a one armed paperhanger for the last 2 weeks! First, I had to come up with 3 paintings of historic Pacific Grove, California and then, off to Santa Cruz, California for their "Plein Aire Affaire". This involved getting up at the crack of dawn every day for a week and driving for an hour to get there. The reward was finding some cool spots up there. You will see the results of that eventually. Stay tuned: I have to go up there tomorrow and Sunday & demo!

9x12

The cherries are in at the farmers market and this is my favorite kind!
I am using Carol Marine's husband's panel holder and it is fabulous! Not so the painting which is the first still life I have done in a while. Stay tuned...maybe things will improve!

oil 6x8

Alecia Dawn at Moss Landing

This day started out very foggy but eventually a bit of sun came out to make a few interesting shadows and highlights. Alecia Dawn is the boat on the right with the black stripe down the stern. I love to paint these boats with all their equipment! You have to simplify but still make everything look right. If you are lucky, one of the fishermen will walk by and offer an opinion!

9x12

sold

This painting was begun at 8pm and the sky is showing signs of sunset although shadows are still not very long and the gardens still busy with parents pushing strollers, kids running around and, out of the picture, the guy who rents sailboats for the sailboat pond is slowly pushing his cart to the storage area and yearning to get home...

7x10

sold

Seven Twenty

As you can see by the clock on the Orsay Museum, it is 7:20 in the evening. Still sunny and bright and everyone is hanging out around the pond where the fountain is cooling the atmosphere. I am under a row of trees enjoying the shade and loving painting everything!

A warm June day and the Tuilleries were jammed with people from around the corner and around the world enjoying the sun and the views and each other. What a treat to be painting there!

gouache, 7x10

Paris Sunset

Another Paris painting. This time they threw me out of the park! Well, not because I was causing a disturbance but because it was nearly nine at night. I really had to paint fast! Even so, by the time I packed up, the nearby gate was locked and I had to take the long way back to our apartment.

gouache, 7x10

In The Tuilleries

Paintings have been happening but I was not able to upload them from my husband's mysterious Mac! As you can see, however, I have not been really suffering the past few weeks! Paris in the springtime is all that they say...

Gouache

7x10

California Days

Another painting from the Carmel Art Festival. This one was painted in the blazing sun looking into Marks Ranch off Route 68 near Salinas, California. The old building really was that color and the cattle showed up fairly regularly as there was water around back. Got a pretty good painting and a sunburn to match!

14x18

Big Tree/Small House

This is another painting I did during the Carmel Art Festival. It is a cool house which is gradually being surrounded by McMansions. The old barn next door used to be visible from the road but has now disappeared behind new houses and fences. The California which made everyone want to live here is being destroyed by them. sigh...

14x18

sold

Old Barn at Garland Ranch

I had thought of posting some more of my Carmel Art Festival paintings but this morning I was out at Garland Ranch and did a small picture of this nice old barn. If you look carefully, you can see little specks where insects and grass seeds and stuff dropping from the trees stuck to the paint. Fortunately, once the painting has dried, it brushes off easily. All just part of the excitement of painting outdoors!

6x8

The Old Barn

This week has been the Carmel Art Festival. We had our canvasses stamped starting at 5pm on Wednesday and painted like crazy until between 6pm Friday when we could hang our paintings. I did this one on Thursday afternoon. It is of a wonderful old barn in Carmel Valley. It was a hot day but there were wonderful shade trees to stand under while I painted and all the people there were so nice! What a treat!

9x12

sold

Three On A Branch

We are just back from 5 days in San Francisco where I enjoyed fun times with a 3 year old and romantic lunches with a husband but did not do any small paintings.

Here in Carmel, the skies are foggy but the tomatos are red! What fun painting cheerful colors!

6x6

Mauve Flower in a Rustic Pot

Some day my squares will come...and I can paint squares again but not until Saturday. We are off to San Francisco for the week. I am bringing gouache so maybe some of those will appear on this site. Stay tuned!

6x8

Little Blue Boat

Not a still life this time, but a cool small boat painted from Wharf #2 in Monterey, California just down the road from Carmel. Monterey is a proper fishing town (not just a tourist spot) and there are lots of great working boats to see and paint!

6x8

sold

M&Ms Visit the Big Apple

Love those m&ms and the fabric with spots!

I got a big box of panels today and was so excited but...they were 6x8 and not 6x6! So...this painting is on an 8x8 gallery wrap.

Loafing Around

As you can see from these last paintings, I have run out of 6x6 Raymar panels and am using 6x8s. A big shipment should be arriving shortly. Meanwhile, here is this nice big roll (or small loaf) from Il Fornaio cut with a really old French picnic knife with an easily sharpened but not easily polished carbon steel blade!

6x8

Nasturtium!

Whoa! It has been ages since I have uploaded a painting! I guess I have just been painting outside all day and have been goofing off at night! Here is one of my favorite flowers. It loves cool spring weather and is great in salad as well as in paintings!

6x8

What A Bunch!

You can tell that Spring is really here when the asparagus appears in the Farmers Market! I just had to paint these before we cooked them up for supper! Yum Yum.

6x8

The Three Graces

Love painting these little tangerines! So jolly and so good!

6x8

Mr Bird & The Daisies

Sometimes I think that the hardest thing about these paintings is getting a decent photograph. This one has those speckles that indicate that there was glare somewhere. It is also out of focus but you should have seen the other 13. With overhead fluorescents, an old halogen torchere, 2 windows and the open garage door...gosh, where would that light be coming from?

6x8

Demitasse & Kumquats II

I just had to paint another version of Demitasse & Kumquats before these fruits bit the dust! You can tell that they are not as shiny as they were originally!

6x6

It's A Daisy

Spring is here!

6x6