Keep Painting

It really was a midnight train to anywhere...I was waiting for it at the Oceanside Amtrak, along with soldiers in their desert uniforms, going home to the Central Valley for leave before going over there...I had in hand my acceptance to work for the concessionaire in Yosemite...I would be given housing, a meal ticket, and unspecified work...noon the next day I arrived and signed in at Human Resources, and given a choice of cashier or bus tables, I chose tables...I can't stand long time in one place, basketball injury, but 'am okay walking about...but looking back, being a cashier would have been good, as it was in the store next to the Art Activity Center, and that cashier often filled in at the Center...sigh...later I applied to work at the Center, but the manager there played favorites, and my application not even considered...I learned this somewhat later, as in and out of the Center for classes and purchases, I became acquainted...hmmph...but in the little bit of gear I had with waiting for the train, were my watercolors, and I was determined to learn to paint on site in the Sierra...I'd kept a notebook of such watercolors for class at Palomar, so I had a routine...I was to be a topographer...even if the job fell through, I was determined...and it nearly did...room mate in the shared little Cabin in Huff was a nightmare...he would drink wine all night, then go drive a bus...first night there I was so sleepy when finally settled in, and he wanted to show me about like at eleven at night, and on a path in Curry Village looking up at the rock climber's lights, he plum fell over...I can give a sympathetic ear to such, and be helpful, but four nights in, the night before Labor Day, room mate celebrated his birthday, and around 4am I said enough, and tried to reach security or housing, who after I waited for an hour in the Curry Lobby, came around, and said I could sleep on the couch in the employee rec trailer by the Ice Rink...daylight came, and I tried to find housing, but they were on holiday, so flapped my arms dressed in night clothes in the Village and finally was given housing in the Ahwhanee Dorm, a room to myself even, at least for a few days...it was actually a room set aside for new arrivals who couldn't be placed yet in a permanent cabins...the busing tables job was fine, and I was put right to work, but the hours were erratic...I didn't have many, but would get called in...management learned in those first days, that I was taking the Art Activity Classes...I'd go every day!...and would send messengers out to tell me to come to work when they needed extra help!...their other method was to put note on my door...after awhile, one learned to make oneself scarce on days off!...the top pic is the first watercolor sketch I did two days after I arrived...I sat on a boulder, there used to be two, but where removed when bike trail repaving was done, right at the start of the Ahwahnee Meadow, where the sidewalk that goes past the row of Cabins begins...while sketching, tourists and cars were going by, and dad and kid on bike stopped by, watched a bit, and the kid said, "Keep Painting!"...fussed some more today to set up the porch for oil painting, and placed a 6x8 board canvas on the easel, and thought, 'letsee if that 'secret' I learned doing the little people on the Stoneman Bridge Painting works...with watercolor, one works from light to dark, the white of the paper a big part of a painting...with oil, one goes from dark to light, and this can be done because one waits for undercoats to dry and one can just paint lighter colors over darker ones...watercolors go fast, and there is a lot of strategy on how to blend, and keep the lights light...even masking fluids...when I did the little people in oils (yesterday's post), I hit upon the idea of painting them in white silhouettes, and then mixing in the dark colors...this all while paints were wet...wet into wet oil painting was what I was doing on a very tiny scale!...but I've read that that is how plein air oils can be done...paint the canvas all white, and while the white is still wet, add in the darker colors...mixing things on the canvas...I've never really tried this, and the second pic is today's effort...I've lost the whites...I went too far, and got preoccupied with getting Half Dome to 'you capture the helmet', which is what I've been told I can do!...sometimes...I always free hand draw, from life, or photograph...and just got to sorta scribbling with the one brush I used, and just a couple colors...since the painting is oil, I can let it dry, and go back over it 'till I 'capture' it!...but I wanted to see if it is possible to cover the canvas with white, and carefully add in darks much like doing watercolor...wet into wet...and it looks to be so!...so onward...oh...it was August, and the tiny pink straw flowers in bloom, which is why there is pink in the foreground of the sketch!