I just came back Saturday from Milan, Italy. On Friday, I had a little time to walk around the Grand Canal area and get some gelatto and sit and make these sketches in my Moleskine sketchbook. Each are about 5x8 inches and sketched in line on the spot, water color added later in my hotel room. A nice relaxing afternoon and a good way to experience the place. Somehow sketching a place connects you at a deeper level that just taking a photo.

I just came back from the coolest trip to Dingle, Idaho (north of Bear Lake, if you know the area).  It's been raining all spring and the hills are really green.  Kathey and I and her brother Sid and his wife Vicky went to a farm house out in the middle of nowhere.  It was great!

I got to give some water color instruction and paint for several days.  We also took some side trips to Star Valley Wyoming, south of Jackson Hole, Preston Idaho, etc.

I love old farm junk and tractors.  Almost every farm has a place where they just dump old stuff that doesn't work, but they can't bear to get rid of.  The old truck was right behind the yard of the place we stayed and the faucet was just pure "rural" with the cast in letters and red paint.

Done plein air in my Moleskine sketchbook with water color added on  the line work.  I've got the sunburn to prove it.

Kirtland Temple and graveyard, Kirtland Ohio

I had a chance last week on a business trip to Cleveland to go out to Kirtland and visit the old town that was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1830's.  I had never walked through the graveyard before and I was pleased to find old headstones of family members who died in the 1830s around that time.  I sat in the passenger side of the rental car and painted this gouache sketch of the graveyard and temple in my Moleskine sketchbook.  You can see where I painted across the fold.  As you can tell, it was a cool overcast day.

Vila de Canoes favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I got a great chance to tour a favela while in Rio at the end of April.  It's generally not recommended to go in without a guide as the only govenment in the favela is the drug sellers. I tried to communicate the visual impressions I got with the makeshift powerpoles and the rat's nest of borrowed power, the activity of the people as they go about their business.  This was one of the more prosperous favelas called Vila de Canoes.  Favelas are squatter shanties that become towns on lands that were formerly public land.  Often they are right next to very expensive resort properties and sometimes the views of the beach and mountains are unrivaled.

Water color on 7x10 Arches 140 lb. block.

Zuma Beach, Malibu, California

OK, back to the landscapes.  We went to Zuma Beach Monday with Christy and her girls.  It was just beautiful.  I brought my small sketchbook along and did this really quick impression of some kids digging in the sand in the low tide area.  The other images is a quick sketch looking down the coast towards Point Dume.  One with some pen line work and one without.

Werewolf

Yeah, I know this is not a landscape.  I was painting Disney princesses with my grand daughters and I got tired of so much refined cuteness.  I guess my counterpoint was to do something scarey, so I grabbed a blank piece of copy paper and using the cheap watercolor set glued to the front of the princess book, I started with a mouth, leaving the white paper as the teeth and this is what came out.

Alexa (5 years old) was painting across from me and as the painting developed, she put up her hand by the side of her face to shield her eyes and said: "I don't think I'm supposed to see that!"

Shame on me!

Sketches from Switzerland and Italy

I re-loaded these sketches as I thought the other ones were underexposed.  All are water colors and were done a week ago in Switzerland and Italy.

Paramount Ranch 2-28-09

Craig and I went to Paramount ranch this morning for a couple of hours.  I had never tried pastels before and we had been talking about changing media and experimenting with something new.  I felt I learned a few things about the medium and am excited to try again.  The tree scene is pretty much how it looked, but I think next time, I'd like to push the design around to get a more interesting composition.

The sketch with the bush on the left was done more quickly and I think the design is more interesting even though there is less detail.

Both sketches around 12x18 on Canson paper.

Spice Market, Istanbul

This is a view of the Spice Market and a nearby Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.  The weather was cold and rainy, so I painted indoors from my laptop.  My wife Kathey is in the black coat walking towards us.  Pen and watercolor in my small notebok.

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.

Siena Duomo

The weather got too rainy to sketch outside, so I did this one in my room from a picture I took in Siena, Italy. I brought it up on my lap top and sketched it from there. Very ornate cathedral, but I tried to keep it simple and give the impression of the scene.
5x7 water color on 140 lb. Arches paper block.

Church tower Sanspolcro, Tuscany, Italy

I sketched this church tower from across a small plaza while seated on steps in a doorway. 5x7 done with ink and water color in a sketch notebook I have.

Sansepolcro, Tuscany, Italy

I go to Sansepolcro alot and this is the 9th time or so this year. I never really get tired of the place, it is small and not many tourists, you really get a sense of the place walking around. The people are very proud of their heritage and still compete in yearly cross bow competitions and like to dress up in medieval clothes. I sat in the window sill of a bank which was closed to make this watercolor sketch on 8x10 Fabriano cold pressed block.

The rough below is about 2 inches tall and was of another street scene I didn't have time to paint. Trying to get looser and let the paper do more.

York, England

I had a chance to spend an extra day in York, a wonderful walled town in northern England. The York Minster is the largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe and certainly one of the most beautiful. It was cold and windy, but still a great time sitting and sketching. Sketches in ink and water color on a small 5x7 sketchpad.

The rough of the tower was painted direct with no drawing as an experiment

Mesilla ,NM

I painted the church without doing a rough while sitting on a bench in the park. I ran out of time when Kathey, Christy and the kids came back to pick me up, so I didn't correct all the value issues. Later after studying the painting, I decided to try some alternate value schemes. These schemes are not what I actually saw, but they make a stronger picture. I guess that's the main lesson here. If I were to paint a studio version of this painting, I would follow one of the more dramatic value schemes in the thumbnails.

Slick Rock Park near Sedona, AZ

I did these thumbnails of a fruit packing barn in Slide Rock State Park near Sedona. I didn't have time to do the larger painting, but the experiments on color and value were interesting. These are really small. just a few inches square.

Sketches from most recent trip to Italy

These are three of the sketches I did on my latest trip to Tuscany. I've been inspired to try a few line sketches combined with water color. I will also try importing some of the sketches into photoshop and adding some color there. That's a medium I don't know as well, but the whole idea is to keep learning, right?

The airport sketch is in Zurich while waiting for the connecting flight to Florence.

I will travel to this area 3 more times this year on business. Tough duty, right?