The Long Weekend

Four glorious and warm days off of work!  I am a lucky duck.  Well, I am a fairly lazy duck, too.  We didn’t dust or vacuum or make the boys  get shovels and find their bedrooms again, and the same bits of spilled cat food are still on the laundry room floor. Too bad that old adage, “It’ll still be there later” is true. 
HOWEVER, I did finish a painting from last week and do two others.  I may be a sporadic cleaner, but I have high hopes that focusing on painting will pay off someday.  Amazing how one can justify anything, isn’t it?
My friend sent me four videos that he was through watching, two of David Curtis and two of Joseph Zbukvic doing watercolor demonstrations.  Blew my mind!  I paint in a tightly controlled way, and these two artists have loose, free styles that produce very lovely work. See:  http://jzbukvic.com/ if you want to see Joseph’s work.  It is worth looking at.
As I worked in pastel this weekend, then again in watercolor yesterday, I tried to put some more loose passages into the paintings.  The two styles of work make some real conflict for me.  I have so much to learn!

This is a spot in Granite Gap where our family likes to picnic.  I loved painting on the spot, rather than in my studio from sketches and photos.  I learned quite a bit from the experience.

This is a ranch house in the mountains close to us, belonging to dear friends.  I sketched it one afternoon, then brought the sketch into the studio and did this watercolor directly from the sketch.  Below is a pastel of the same house, but I’ve rearranged it a bit for my purposes.  I fought my way through the whole work; I seemed to have a hard time finding the right colors.  In the end, though it started to flow and I like the feeling of the light.