Why cell phone cameras are a good thing

Underwood Fire, 7:14AM

I was at my friends' house and went out early my last morning there to take some pictures of the city lights across the river, and I noticed sky light reflecting on the river so I turned to the east to shoot one of the pre-dawn sky, and this is what I saw. After I pounded on the window to get their attention I whipped out my phone and took 3 quick shots, two of which were blurred. Sitting in the living room, occupied with books and computers, none of us had noticed it.

The fire was about an hour and a half old at this point, and I was definitely anxious as we watched a new, big flare-up about every 3 minutes for far too long, as the packing plant fruit boxes and parts of the pear shed caught fire, one after another. We got on the radio and found that our guess from looking at maps was correct. I really felt helpless watching the destruction continue, wondering if it could possibly jump to the trees and head toward us. When I heard they had six engine companies on it and more were on the way, I relaxed a little. About an hour later, they had all the flames out, leaving a smoldering, smoking ruin.

Another blue and orange painting! (With a little teeny tiny bit of yellow.)

5,184 square inches of painting

A Bigger Gorge

I finished the painting last night, after some rework on the foreground and the strip of sky. Haven't heard back from the client yet but there's nothing more I want to do to it. I don't think I could make it better without repainting large portions of it. It is what it is, and I'm willing to accept it as such.

I certainly do still want to paint a lot more pictures of the gorge, try different painting styles, different colors, and also different seasons, different angles and lighting, like doing more portraits of the same person; try to capture more moods, more facets of their personality. But I need to switch to other subjects for a while. A lot of other things are starting to pile up in my head and I need to get them out.

The most difficult aspects were all related to it being so big, and painting it in such a flat, semi-abstract style, minimizing texture in favor of colors. As I was working out the final selection of hues and values in the river and foreground, I decided to keep them simple, not to let them pull the eye away from the predominant focus on the far end of the river and the hills around it. I spent several days thinking that choice through and decided it was the right one for this work.

The PBS series American Masters profiled Tyrus Wong last weekend, whose landscapes combine traditional Chinese themes mixed with a simplified style and non-traditional colors. They quoted him as saying that large amounts of detail are childish, and what the painting should show is the painter's enthusiasm for the scene. I found his paintings dramatic, evocative, and very beautiful, and that coupled with my decades of admiration for the works of Georgia O'Keeffe helped me settle on simplicity. I'm not saying it's the right approach for everyone, or for every subject, but when it works, it's great.

The only real surprise was that it took about three times more paint than I thought it would. I'm really glad I tackled it. My greatest fear was that I was going to damage one of the panels carrying it back and forth to the living room for photos, and when I accidentally brushed them with my shoe just walking around the studio. So far they're all in good shape. I just have to glaze them now—I did buy an extra jar of glaze—and that will take several days for all of them. I would varnish them except I have no experience with varnish, and I'm not using these for guinea pigs.