California Trip Travel Journal, July 2013

I flew out a couples of days early to see local national parks, then spent time on the California Specialty Crops Tour.

Say No to Gun Violence

I felt I needed to do this since my friend, John Massey, is working on a great 'Say No to Gun Violence' sculpture and that made me think I should try to make a statement on the theme. The message here is that good will prevail and that guns belong to the dark side. The model for the girl is my six year old granddaughter, in some ways representing the Newtown victims.

Study in Whites

When Julia and I were looking at the Mary Cassatt painting in the book below she insisted that the subjects were a big sister and a little sister. That gave me the idea of dressing Julia and Willow in white and recreating the painting. I tried to get some feet in the painting but Willow was not into fully cooperating.

Strawberries

I was feeling guilty because the painting I entered last year in the "Nutrition" category of the USDA employee art show featured Linnea eating a cupcake! For this year's show I wanted to enter something more nutritious! These painting hang on the walls of USDA's South Building for about a year. The photo reference was snapped at a family gathering where we suddenly noticed that Linnea was taking a bite out of every strawberry then moving on to the next from a big bowl.

Cousins Playing Dress Up

I've been doing more sketching than painting but over a three day weekend was able to complete a "real" painting of my 2 oldest granddaughters playing dress up.

Self Portrait

I'm not really much for self-portraits but if you want to practice improving your technique you are the one who is always there. What I am still doing is art journaling, where the entries are pencil, pen, ink, watercolor or any combination of these. Trying to get the watercolors a little looser, with more interesting colors - still a ways to go!

Art Journal

I'm having a lot of fun with the Art Journal thing. Early dismissal from work today means I got to sketch around the National Mall and try out a little travel watercolor set I made from a mints tin.

To make the watercolor set, I filled the tin with a layer of white sculpy and made depressions for the colors and for mixing spaces. You bake scuply at 275 for 15 minutes and you're done. I also had to trim a paintbrush handle so it would fit.