Ink

This is the oil paint that remained on my palette after painting the frog. I used a palette knife to make a small abstract.

I used oil paint to add a frog to the ink abstract I posted earlier.

Watercolor I began this painting on location, but it was just the mountains and an indication of the road. I finished the rest for today's posting.

Watercolor -- not my best medium but I'm taking this opportunity to improve. I made the graphite sketch first and then did the painting during a 3 hour life drawing session.

I made the graphite sketch first and then did the painting during a 3 hour life drawing session.

Ink on Yupo paper

This was a struggle.

Pencil sketch in preparation for a painting.

8x8 Watercolor

Painted in WC Adolph Cordier suffered leg wounds in the Battle of Chancellorsville, VA. He served in Company K, 26th Regiment and was promoted to First Lieutenant, just before he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville.. Quoting from his claim for Invalid Pension: I received wounds from ball bullets and fine buckshot in the left leg below the knee. The flesh was badly torn away and nerves severed. I was in the front-line with my company in their advance when I was sounded and as we fell back the Confederate troop[s advanced and it was then that I was captured and take to the rear of the Confederate lines, but they were unable to give me proper medical attention. A month later I had still not received any medical attention and in an exchange of prisoners I was traded for a Confederate officer and brought to the Union General Hospital at Staunton, VA where I received my first real medical care. As the hospital was overcrowded, I returned to Milwaukee and my family on June 29 on a Medical Leave of Absence. I was still not able to move at all without assistance and the Army sent me to Cincinnati for complete examination and further medical care for the disability as described above . . . Adolph never recovered from his wounds and about two years later he died at his home on the corner of 6th and Tamarack Streets in Milwaukee on April 28, 1866 at the age of 36. He left his widow Margaret and five children (including my GG Grandmother Henrietta). His widow, Margaret died in 1876, at the age of 47, leaving her five children as orphans, including my GG Grandmother Henrietta, age 12.

I think I would have had better results if I'd just done a pen and ink sketch and indicated just a bit of color with watercolor. Live and Learn.

Day 8 This was first painted during the short blush of green that we get in Southern California. After the green comes the yellow mustard plants, if we're lucky. Soon after, the green turns to the brown. As Kate Wolf sings: Here in California, fruit hangs heavy on the vines Day 8 There's no gold, I thought I'd warn you And the hills turn brown in the summertime

Day 9 I saw this man walking his great Dane along the Strand in Redondo Beach. I knew I'd paint it some day. That day was January 0, 2017.

Day 7 Pastel 9x7 This painting began as a plein air sketch, but when a trailer full of horses arrived I had to move and stop painting. I had a photo, but the men and horses were in different positions. I stuck with my original sketch. This "tack shed" was located in open country, with no other buildings nearby, except a corral. The ranch hands would store their saddles in the old cargo container at the end of the day. I was attending the Manzanar paint out and this was one of the locations -- on a ranch near Lone Pine, California.

Day 5 8x10 pastel I did a plein air study on this ranch in gouache, and I used the gouache study to create this pastel. You can see the logged hills in the background, the irrigated pastures with cattle in the middle ground, and the stream in the foreground. The ranch was near Dubois, Wyoming. I'll post a photo of the gouache too.

This small 5x7 was painted on location. I used this study to paint the 8x10 pastel of the same subject. Compared to other mediums, gouache dries so quickly it's very difficult to create soft edges. I wanted to see what the scene would look like with softer edges that help to make the distant landscape recede in space, so I painted the same scene in pastel.

Day 3 6x6 oil painted with a palette knife This area, located on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, south of Los Angeles, was once a whaling station manned by Portuguese whalers. One day I saw saw six whales pass nearby as I painted.

Day 4 The Eastern Sierra is dotted with black basalt lava flows and red cinder cones -- evidence of a volcanic past. Geologists believe this is due to a stretching of the Great Basin -- a region of interior drainage that is bounded by the Wasatch Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Ranges to the west, and the Snake River Basin to the north.

Taken from Highway 395 looking west toward the Eastern Sierra Nevada. These ragged black basalt rocks are the remnants of lava flows.

Day 2 6x8 oil This was done mostly with a palette knife.

Day 1 6x6 oil This animal has a brain the size of a walnut. They do not plan or think, they only react; therefor, keep your distance!