watercolor journaling

Because I would like to try to achieve a painting a day I am going to have to rely a lot on my journaling. Little sketches of the day. I've always kept a journal. A good friend of mine, Gay Kroeger, Loma Prieta, CA turned me onto watercolor journaling. She has a wonderful web site on the subject and she and her friend custom make beautiful watercolor journals in which you are to paint your daily journal. http://www.watercolorjournaling.com/

watercolor haiku, "Kettle Mountain Gold" 3"x6"

Sometimes all you have time for is a quick note to self. Some might call that a haiku in paint. My friend Kate owns a painting like this by me that is 1'x4'. She saw the Kettle Mts in a state of glowing splendor and sent me the digital picture I did this watercolor from. Thanks Kate! Good to know that home is just over those golden peaks.

watercolor landscape, "Duck Brook Bridge, MA" 6x9

Acadia National Park, Maine, has a system of carriage roads established in the 1800's by the Rockefellers and restored by Ed Winterberg. I get the opportunity to work for Wildwood Stables next summer driving horses and giving tours of the Island. What a deal. Working horses and painting where Thomas Cole, Fredrick Church and others painted and many still do. I met New York pleinair painter Walter Mosely here and would have met more but I was busy painting too. My journal is filled with notes to explore on this winter's easle.

"Strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bingness of his spirit and all the littlenesses are in it." Robert Henri, "The Art Spirit"

"Tough winter on the Deer" 6x9 oil on veneer, $75

We've had more snow this winter than we have had in a long time. It's not a record by any means but it is notice to those that have moved here from warmer climates in the last 20 years of drought.
Snow is good. It replenishes the streams and acquifers which makes for a good hay season and stabilizes the economy that depends upon run off for electricity, irrigation and navigation in the Columbia river.
When I go out to the hay barn to feed the horses I walk with the herd up to the barn so I can watch the white tail deer that have crawled under a whole in the back wall and are eating hay. Last night there was a doe and her two yearlings as well as 3 Hungarian Partridges. I didn't think 'Huns' were up this high in the Sanpoil and hung around the open slopes of the Columbia. We also have a flock of Pine Grossbeaks that we only see on occasion. They are a lovely red and grey that eat seeds from the evergreens and bushes.
I watched these deer huddeled under some trees in the pasture scratching for any green stuff or lichen they can find. The snow was warm when it fell but it got colder making the top into a crust which the deer breakthrough and have trouble going. It's a bad thing as coyote's can run on top of the snow and take down the deer that have trouble eluding them although it is a good thing for the moles, voles and mice that make tunnels under the snow. It's comical to watch the coyotes listening for critters under the snow that they pounce on through the snow.
We have to watch for wildlife that use the highway for their travels as it is easier than making their way through the deep snow. Their are many casualties although the eagles and raven, opportunists that they are, do well on the carrion.

Sketch of Hobo Stensgar

Henry "Hobo" Stensgar, is my neighbor and feeds my horses when I'm off on business. He's a Colville Tribal Member here on the reservation and would like to see all the cattle on the reservation replaced by buffalo. He hunts deer everyday and provides for his extended family and senior citizens. He loves to snag salmon down at Chief Joeseph Dam named after the famous Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce' who is buried on the reservation in Nespelem.

Hobo is generous enough to sit for me. He sits near the window and watches the mountains and field for deer and the occasional eagle that is cruising the Sanpoil looking for fish.

My Stuff on Ebay, sold

This was a warm day in February when I climbed a mountain to get this view of my neighbors ranch. I've cut hay using horses for years in the fields that are covered in snow.
This is a fork in the Sanpoil Valley of the Colville Indian Reservation where the highway splits and goes through the mountains east to Inchelium and north to Republic. It has been an area used for generations where native americans fished for salmon and camped before traveling on to distant homes.
I captured the deep cold shadows of "Cold Mountain" where the sun never shines in the winter. It's safe to plant your garden when "the snow goes off of Chillimoss Mountain."

"Draft Horse Drawing #182" 6"x8"

Every day I work in the studio I start the day sketching horses. My intention is to start a body of work that reflects my knowledge of working horses. I think what I will do is a series of horses working in a 'skyscape' to give myself an excuse to paint my two most favorite subjects.

What I have discovered is that it is necessary to do this excercise to maintain the 'visual vocabulary' I have attained with this subject. Where painting from nature whether plein air or alla prima still life is where one begins internalizing this language, it must be excercised to keep such images alive and believable.

As a subject the horse is difficult not only because of its complex and beautiful shape but because the subject is usually in motion. Over time I get more comfortable drawing the horse from different perspectives. Because having worked horses for more than 30 years I look forward to the paintings that I hope to do that impart my respect for my equine partners and the world as it should be if it weren't for the 'infernal combustian engine."

"Otter Bay Lobster Shack 2" oil on canvas 16"x20"

I continue to 'fix' this painting. A little too busy, I can't get myself to change the rocks anymore because I like the spiral composition of the seaweed as it flows into the rocks which I think suggests movement of the tide coming in. I put more detail in the lobster traps stacked on the warf and added a skiff that the lobster man climbing up to his shack has tied off to the pier. His lobster boat with the sail up to keep the boat into the wind in case it storms, is tied off to a buoy sheltered in Otter Bay from the open sea, a sea that goes off endlessly to where clouds are building on the horizon and portend heavy weather is coming.
Perhaps the sky is too blue but I guard against fixing it because everytime I do I get carried away and the painting changes. I have learned that the sky may look blue but is grey imbued with contrasting complimentary colors. Working with ones imagination you have to guard against what you think a thing should look like and what you have to do visually to make it believable.

"Forest Music, Tahoe" 4"x8" oil on mahogany $50

"Forest Music" 4"x8" oil on veneer

This is a painting done to assuage my imagination. Pulled out of the veneer it is painted on, this is an image fabricated out of the internal vocabulary acquired during plein air painting in the mountains of Lake Tahoe. Round granite, shaped by glaciation, clear streams, the manna of mountains that sustain the valleys, Sequoia whose roots and leaves filter air and water we breadth.
It has a bit to do with a series I have in mind regarding 'watersheds', which are the be all-end-all treasure that all good things literally flow from. Drinking, irrigation, flushing your toilet and in the PNW, electricity. Pretty mundane considering the real value of beauty and inspiration derived from the Sylvan platitudes of a burbling brook that nurtures giant redwoods, sequoias or ponderosa pine. Where gods and demigods, silfs, dryads and the fabled kingdom of Lothlorian come.
I stained the veneer with Prussian Blue and chose the middle value of ultramarine deep and raw umber, using Prussian for the darkest value and cad yellow for my highlights. As Michaelangelo was said to do, I gazed into the grain of the veneer until I saw the image that was there and proceeded to pull it out of the board simply watched the drawing unfold, careful to interject the right values to the appropriate hue. It is a technique very similar to working in scratchboard or as some say, ink board. Scratching through the ink to let the white show through, working light to dark and back again.
Fun stuff!

Sage Steppe Basalt, landscape painting

I went down to Moses Coulee, WA to check out the Nature Conservancy's new acquistion and field station at Wisper Lake. I had the opportunity to walk in the Sage Steppe habitat so important to such species as the sharp tailed grouse. The Sage Steppe has been the victim of the plow for some time and all that is left of this unique habitat is in the coulees and rim rock.
In an effort to preserve some of this habitat The Nature Conservancy,is setting aside tracks of land in the hope that it is not too late for some of the species dependent upon this habitat.
It is a harsh landscape, hot in the summer and cold in the winter, open to the wind and very arid. Water is a premium.
Working with horses in the woods, logging, I have learned that it is easy to damage eco systems and it is important to walk lightly and be aware of our impact as we are just borrowing the resources that our children will inherit and unless we are careful they will not have what we have had the pleasure to enjoy and resources to sustain us. It is all about sustainability. To have a future we must learn from the past while we reap what we sow in the present