new paintings

Last week I spent a lot of time driving around the central valley up against the coast ranges painting orchards, vineyards and rolling hills. Several places I found roads that offered the perfect balance between ease of access and lack of traffic so I could paint in peace. More new paintings are up on the website.

sun at last

We've had several days without rain in a row and I've been making good use of spring break by painting every day. So far I've done several long and scenic drives, oogling the scenery and stopping to paint. The paintings aren't dry enough to photograph yet, but here's some photos from the trips. The first is a location I painted near Williams on the east side of the coast range. The second is of a bank of Fawn Lillies on Stewarts Pt Rd in Sonoma county, which is an awesomely scenic, long and twisty route from Lake Sonoma out to the coast just north of Salt Point state park.

more birds

I finished this print the other night. I'd originally intended to put a couple more colors down, to distinguish the birds from the branches. But after I pulled some proofs and played around with it, I decided I liked this one with just the two colors. Here's a photo of the process and the finished print.

My new tools from Japan are making light work of clearing those large areas of the block.