Near Somis, California in the lemon groves 1-17-09

Where else but in Southern California can you go painting outdoors in January and have the weather be 85 degrees and sunny? Craig and I and Dorota (a friend of Craig's from Disney) went out a couple of miles beyond Moorpark and painted these great lemon sheds. It was such a great day with bicyclists, horse riders and a few others going down the road enjoying being outside. We were really left to ourselves other than an occasional greeting.

I did these on a 9x12 block of 140 lb. Fabriano cold pressed paper with traditional water colors. We just took the morning to paint and were back home around 1:30pm.

Cabin in the snow, Twin Peaks, California 12-30-08

I thought this old cabin had great character with it's metal roof, red color and funky windows. Done in watercolor in my ring bound 6x9 sketchbook. I did some minimal line work in ink before going to paint which I think added something to the sketch.

Everything looked so wonderful covered in snow. These cabin roofs were the view from where we were sliding on the cookie sheet.

Next to our cabin there was a nice field with some slope. We were so eager, we went out with cookie sheets and the lid to a popcorn tin and went sliding. The snow had been rained on and had refrozen the night before so we had a really slippery time.

I decided to show the edges of my sketchbooks on these water color sketches to give a better sense of scale.