Where Are I?

I know it has been two months since my last posting, but there was a lot of paperwork to be done after my dear old Mom died … and now there are the annual accounts to prepare, as well.  There is also the matter the commissions I have been working for the past 13 months, throughout it all, and on which I have a concentrated few weeks left to finish them off.  Therefore, I beg your forbearance, and will reappear in the next posting when those are completed.  After that I will be preparing to get back out into the wild to paint and begin posting them here.  Meanwhile, I will leave you with a page from one of my sketchbooks, done several years ago in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge.  Ta ta, for now ...

“Lower Lewis Falls”

(Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington Cascades)

From an Original Sketchbook Drawing in Sepia Wash

heightened with White & Naples Yellow on Turner’s Blue Paper

(sketchbook page size approx. 5” x 7”)

There is also a Middle & Upper Lewis Falls, both of which I saw as well, before I came back to this site and drew this scene.  It was 18:21 when I began this sketch and had to work rapidly before the light faded.  I downed tools at 20:07.  On a brighter day I might have worked longer, but it had gradually clouded over throughout the afternoon.

The Beginning

Hello, and welcome to my new Blog, “Not Quite a Painting a Day.”  I suppose one should begin at ‘The Beginning,’ and if one has read the essay under the tab above, “The Journey,” one might very well take that to be ‘The Beginning;’ or was ‘The Beginning’ really the earliest of those extended sketching journeys near the start of my Art career; or was it when one of my earliest Watercolour won a 2^nd Place Ribbon at the Tri-State Fair at age seven?  Perhaps it was the sunrise seen at age five that inspired that early Watercolour; or maybe it goes back to one of my earliest outdoor memories of sunlight sparkling on the water at a picnic at age two or so?  It might be said that all Beginnings on the thread of life are one Beginning.  Philosophical musings aside, this is the first posting on my first Blog, therefore let us consider this as the beginning; at least of this new Journey.  And so again I bid you welcome.

At present I am on the south-central coast of Oregon and attended the opening of the “21^st Maritime Art Exhibition,” at the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay last weekend, and in which I had two small and highly detailed Watercolours.  These were painted several years ago, before this present Journey had begun, and I had them available for submission to the show.  They represent my labor-intensive studio Watercolours, and not the Oil Sketches & Studies that will be mostly presented on this Odyssey.  They are presented below.

C1328

“Day’s End on Indian Beach”

(Ecola State Park, Oregon Coast)

Watercolour

3” x 9”

C1349

“Blustery Afternoon at Shore Acres with Simpson Reef Beyond”

(Shore Acres State Park, Oregon Coast)

Watercolour

5½” x 11”

I will be camping on private land in the Bandon area for the next few days, courtesy of friends of mine, and will be painting the coast hereabouts before moving on and painting further south along the Oregon Coast.  While here I hope to finalize the coordination between this Blog and Daily Paintworks, and should have the first of my Oil Sketches up for sale on my next posting.  In the meantime I will leave you with one more image; this time of one of my small Oil Paintings, which is at the Rip Caswell Gallery in Troutdale, Oregon.  Please do come back and enjoy this Journey into the Wild.

C1545

“Spring Run-off”

(Lower Lewis Falls, Gifford Pinchot, National Forest, Washington Cascades)

Oil on Panel

5” x 10”

Cheers for now … and see you soon.