The forecast is rain, with no chance of any painting..

The weather is "rain and more rain" all next week with the clouds building here in CA for the weekend. I am bummed and it's only Friday! That means no chance of any canvas creativity at all. As a sun-spoiled southern CA guy, if it ain't beach weather, it ain't worth getting out of bed for. The good news is that rain is perfect for script writing so I guess I will finally turn out that treatment that's been due for a while.

Our local Inn ripped out the old gas station and planted a vineyard. I decided to try out my new "fast painting" art case that is about the size of a mid-size coffee table book, stocked with the basic colors, a few brushes, and a small bottle of water - and head off to the late afternoon light and the newly planted vineyard. The entire painting took about an hour on site before it got just too cold. I finished it up the following afternoon in the front yard [temp 80+] in about 20 minutes. The kit needs only minor adjustments to make it really work on vacations, trips to the beach, or just to take out for a fast painting or two. The lesson is to finish in an hour or less.

"Sleighbells Ring...are you listening?"

It really started as a painting of Tucker the Cat and turned into Santa. I like to do a Santa painting at the "hols". This is about 12 hours of work scattered over lots of days - with the big push to get done around Thanksgiving time. I was painting in my open garage at home to get the late afternoon light. The neighbors - the mailman - even the UPS driver would give me their great input. The UPS lady wanted "lights in the tree", and someone mentioned a bow tie for Tucker. The tie went from red to this "Churchill" pattern he made famous. I crackled the varnish for a old-feeling yellow tinted finish. Great fun! next - The Corner Room in State College, PA in winter.

This is a "favorite" snapshot from a pal's New Orleans cancer recovery celebration parade. I love this and I think I can make a fun action portrait from it. Lots of energy, smiles, and music in every stroke. The challenge is that I am really into the production of a neat PBS docu-music TV special right now and all my creative energies are locked into that project until January! But sometimes painting really frees up my creative "juices" and allows me to bring all kinds of new energy to every creative project I am into at that moment. We'll see.

"SOME PEOPLE PAINT TO MAKE A LIVING...

I PAINT TO MAKE A LIFE."