I Am A Weather Wimp

For all my spirit being willing, the flesh got weak when the temperature fell below 20 degrees. I managed to sit all of ten minutes in the snow out the back door of my Nebraska in-laws, where I was spending Thanksgiving, and draw what I think might have been an elm tree. It grew in the yard next-door. Whatever it was, it had been limbed up the day before and the scars were fresh where the saws had done their work. And it had been a young tree when the neighbors built their house and put a chain link fence around the yard, because the fence post is now a permanent part of the root system. This is the hard thing about suburban drawing: you can’t pretend there’s anything wild and natural unless you’re pretty good at pretending. I thought about leaving out the fence and the telephone wires but in the end I gave in and drew them in. I would have put in the swing set and tool shed, too, but damn it, it was cold out there.

No Such Thing As An Accident

The View From The River

An overstuffed studio has its hazards and while I was opening a flat file drawer today, a drawing board perched precariously on an easel on which a grouping of plein air canvases was arranged, fell to the floor and dragged everything down with it in a clatter of uncontrollable junk. The drawing board tilted when it hit, putting a sharp corner all the way through a painting I’ve been struggling with for the last two days.

My first thought was Oh, Crap! and my second thought was, Hallelujah! Which means that I’ve either evolved into an enlightened being who can let go of material attachments, or I’m relieved that I don’t have to screw around with a bad canvas. Or maybe someone up there likes me.

The View From The Rocks-Plein Air Start #6, 8″x 10″ acrylic on canvas

In any case, Saturday was blissfully spent painting on red rocks in the hot sun or in the middle of a shallow stream with my friend Becky at Martin Nature Park, just north of OKC. I got two more starts for my plein air series, and the survivor of the two is shown above. I like this one better anyway. I’ll post the defunct one so you can see why I don’t regret its demise. It’s all practice, anyway.

If I don’t make another post before Thursday, happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Eat, drink, and draw!

Cooling my heels while I work on a doomed painting. Photo by Becky Way.

Methinks it Needs a Duck

Can’t you just see a pair of Mallard floating in the sun? Stay tuned for avian additions.

Here’s the latest- it’s #5 in the One Hundred Starts series. There’s a little pond next to our property. In twelve years I’ve never gone over there to paint (I’ve never hardly gone anywhere to paint), and in the last few months someone’s finally bought this orphaned property, it seems. While I was out there splatting paint on the canvas a red pickup rolled past, stopped, and backed up so the people inside could give gave me a long look. I waved, they waved and drove on. No one kicked me out. It’s a nice spot to paint- I saw at least five more possible paintings in the morning light. Who knows how many will be available at Happy Hour?