A Long Stretch

It's been quite awhile since I posted, so here's an update. In the early spring, Mary Byrom and I, plus a few others, painted at Mothers' Beach in Maine. That's Mary with the easel and me with a sketchbook.

Later, I went to Sugar Hill, NH with the New Hampshire Plein Air group to paint the lupines. We do this every year. The flowers are wonderful, but of course I had to get a couple of buildings in. This is a 12" by 9", oil on oil-primed linen. I'm expanding it into a larger painting, but so far it's a flop.

Below is my part in a collaborative printing (woodcut) project, engineered by Maria Arango, an artist from Las Vegas. The result is a huge, multi-part, "puzzle" print, but she has also published the images in a book. Here's a link to her site if you want details: http://1000woodcuts.com/projects/cityoftheworld/index.html. It's fun to be part of such a huge project!

In August, while hauling my painting gear out of the back of the car in Camden, I slipped a disk in my back and was laid up for a couple of months. Ouch! Because of that, I didn't get to one of my favorite places to paint, Tarbin Gardens, very often, but here's a small (7" x 5") oil I did there at the edge of one of the ponds. 

I'm working on making my painting gear a lot lighter, to prevent any more injuries. One project is turning an old laptop computer into a paintbox, We'll see! 

In the meantime....

While I'm working on getting photos of paintings, here's a casual photo of a reduction woodcut done for a Baren print exchange. It's called "Barney at the Beach" and is done from a photo I took on a freezing cold, windy day in November. A man was throwing a ball for his two dogs, who ran again and again into the surf to get it, not minding the frigid water. The image is 10" x 7" and is really rectangular. The odd shape is because I took the pic while the print is still hanging to dry. I wish it would hurry up; it's supposed to be in the mail today! 

The Baren forum is an online group of printmakers who exchange original relief prints and information on techniques, ideas, sources, etc. It's a great group! They're at: http://www.barenforum.org/. 

Snow!

Now that the holidays are over, it's time to settle down and paint. Here I am on Tuesday, trying out oil-primed linen again. I'm beginning to like this stuff!  Mary Byrom found a turnout we could paint from. It's still not bitterly cold, so we needed only a modest number of layers to keep warm. You might be able to see the little barn behind me across the field (I was painting the buildings on the other side of the road). After awhile we noticed animals coming out of the barn.

Here's a closeup of the donkeys that kept an eye on us. They're too cute not to paint sometime. I'll post the farm I painted as soon as I get photos (forgot to do it in the field).