Softball

 

"I want to go get it!" she said, twig in hand.
"Let it go, we can get another..."
And they trotted back to the field...

In the watercolor sketch, the slope of the front of Half Dome, and Washington Column, are too shallow...but in study, I came to like the wide look, and too, the darks on Half Dome's face in the watercolor are squared off, like a one time brush stroke, and I like that, and thought, I can duplicate that real well with the charcoal stick...class that day was at the Ahwahnee Meadow...and at the GG Library, after snack in old town (Zachet's has closed...sad to see...everytime I go in this old deli I remember going in at five...wooden floor, high ceiling, shelves filled with all kinds of soda)...at the Library, I happened on a set of large collections of old master drawings...went through the Italians, and libray closed before I got through the French...there's a real distinct evolution in European art, the artists from one century to the next building on each others innovations...and it's remarkable how the geniuses stand out...I haven't thought of these fellows for a long time, and it was oh!...Giotto, Raphael, Lenoardo, Michaelangelo, Tiopolo!, Fragonard!! Watteau!!! Delacroix!!!!!...at Palomar, we had an assignment to do an old master painting and put our own head on it...I did Fragonard's Sultan...hope that's still in a box!...the class beauty did Fragonard's Girl Reading a Book, which at the time the Washington Museum serendipitously loaned to the San Diego Museum...I'm much taken with that painting, went to see it like four times!...and while looking today at the drawings at the Library, I'd read the captions, and critics have very good eyes, and they could tell the size and shape of the charcoal sticks being used...in the charcoal I tried to use a short one and a longer one...kept dropping the short one...and I tried not to use outline...third pic  is that...but I caved and put in the lines...the old masters often did too I noted...line doesn't exist really in nature, but where would Delacroix's Lions be!...anyway...sunny blue warm...I wanted to post up the softball from yesterday, and while looking at the Duck preening pics, I noted the feathers, and thought, 'oh, they lend themselves to being done in charcoal perfectly!!'...last pic is the corner on the porch where I have set up...how impossible it was in the Valley to have just such a spot, and a sink to wash paint brushes in!...the little easel sat up in the middle of the Activity Center for years, until the price was lowered so someone could afford it--me!...oh!...and I'd forgotten a painting I wanted to do of Toulumne...Mountain Lion sleeping on the Ridge above May Lake...Cathedral Peak in the background...after Delacroix...for sometime...