My class mates were quite taken with my little people (painting is 8x10)...this back at Palomar College in Spring 2003...we had been given a choice for our last project...a large oil painting, or several small ones...any subject...well, I immediately dug out some of my vacation pics from Yosemite, and did up six little paintings...each was a study using a limited pallet...sometime warm sometime cool...so they look a little odd...and of course my being a student gives that folk art look!...but anyway, I was setting up the Porch Room for a little oil painting studio...already have the utility room for watercolors...and too have thoughts for the garage for framing and air brush, and the covered backyard patio for warm days....and while putting things here and there, happened on my old watercolor notebooks I did the first season in the Valley...paused, and thought, I better photograph all these...I'd just taken two paintings down from the rafters in the garage that I did in class in 1969, and mice and mildew and rain and such, but I think I can clean them...and took photos if I cant...post for sometime...and to backup the Yosemite effort, I've uploaded the Valley paintings' pics to my computer now, and I thought to make a slide show for the blog, but that's not how I would have done things if I've been doing the blog in 2003 when I was making the paintings...I would have put them up as I did them, day by day...what to do what to do...well, I'll just do that, and annotate each painting as I would have back then...so, so, dear readers, this will take a bit!...I discovered something doing the little people, a kinda secret, how to do them, and how to do plein air oil in a hurry, maybe acyrlic too!...Fragonard could do knockdown paintings in like fifteen minutes, and if one is to make money at art, speed helps!...anyway, on the last day of class, we all put our paintings up for the critique...I have photo of my classmates somewhere, for sometime...oh...it's in the Palomar Notebook, a post for sometime sure...and I had the thought to make tourist postcards from my paintings, and I had some of these with...they were a hit!...and I was embarrassed when asked to sign them...I had enough for all my class mates...the pics up aren't good, bad lighting, painting is above my bunk, and getting cobwebby again...but something happened in the top cropped photo that's kinda neat...the lighting is sparkling off the grain of the canvas...on looking at that, I thought, 'but that is how the Sunlight is on the Trees, espicially at high noon!...the Leaves here and there reflecting silvery'...the reference photo for the painting is from 1995, and when I arrived in the Valley for the job in 2003, jumping from the Bridges was forbidden...and the tourists very obediant....I don't think I saw anyone jump in my ten year visit, including myself...having done the painting, I thought I must jump off Stoneman Bridge someday too!...for sometime...it was much fun on hot midsummer days!...I imagine the Valley looks more like my watercolor of Bobcat Meadow nowabout...that painting is about the last one I did before I picked up the Canon S3, and it was studio/in cabin...actually the little kitchen cabin...from reference photo...it was taking the reference photos that diverted me from the paintings...critters kept coming by!...I have my own 'secret' way of stretching watercolor paper too!
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