Walk!

"Walk!"
24 x 18, pastel

Inspired by my San Francisco trip last month. I'm still thinking about that beautiful Bay Area light and the tall buildings and all of the people out and about.

As I observed this couple, it seemed to me that the man was trying very hard to get the woman to respond to him. He held her in his arms, he leaned toward her, he took off his sunglasses to look into her eyes. She, on the other hand, held her arms at her sides, leaned back just a bit, and kept her sunglasses covering her eyes. When the light changed, I could help but think, "She's going to walk away from him and not come back."

Plein air at Elk Rock Island

I practiced painting water today at Elk Rock Island with my friend, Celeste Bergin.

Water presents a lot of challenges for a painter and today had the added challenge of shifting flotsam on the water's surface.

That, and the ducks who disturbed the reflections by splashing and making ripples while doing their duck dance.

Oh, and my subject, the fisherman, kept walking away.

Sigh.

I was happy to use my newly cleaned pastel box today. It took about two hours yesterday to take everything out of the box, vacuum all of the dust off the foam inserts, clean the pastels with corn meal and put it all away again. Wow! Everything looked so bright and pretty when I was done. The dust accumulation in the box had made everything look brownish gray. It was kind of fun to discover what color was beneath the dusty outside every time I made a stroke, but the clean box and clean pastels were a joy to use today.

There are so many excuses to not get out there and paint. Today it was nice to just go and do it. Even better to go with a friend.