30 Days of Art – Done!

All painted, all signed, photographed and all ready for drop-off on Sunday.   The show is going to be part of December’s Pioneer Square Art Walk on Thursday, Dec 5 from 5-11 p.m. at the T.K. Artists Lofts, 115 Prefontaine Place South.    This is a very fun show with thousands of 8×10 pieces of art randomly covering the walls.  A lot of people showed up last year and it was fun to roam around and try to find pieces by artists you know or have discovered.   If you like something you just peel it off the wall and buy it on the way out, all works are $50 so things thin out as the night goes on.

This process has definitely re-ignited my love of painting and doing creative work, not that coding isn’t creative but…   I’m pulling out a few large pieces that I’ve started and haven’t finished and going back to work on them as well as turning a few of these small pieces into larger oil paintings.  I won’t be kicking out a painting a day but hopefully one every few weeks for the winter.

Crystal Cove Sunset

In January we went to SoCal for a week, staying just above Crystal Cove State Park where we would take long runs and walks through the canyons and along the beach.   One evening we were walking the beach just as the sun was setting and I got this shot.  The scene reminded me of a Gerard Richter’s Seascape from 1998 which we saw at the SF MOMA retrospective and have a print of hanging in our stairwell.

Acrylic made getting this the way I wanted it very hard, I used a lot of retarder to try and allow better mixing of the paint and softening of the edges but it was still drying way to fast.   I may have to revisit this in oils on a larger scale later.   Still, it seemed like a good painting to end the series on since it was one of our first trips of the year.

Done!  This is definitely the most I’ve painted in a decade.  The last show I had work in was in 2003 so ten years ago.  I don’t think I’ve done 30 pieces in that entire decade so this definitely got me back into painting in a big way.   I do plan on doing some more larger oils once this show has wrapped up.  I think I’ll stay away from acrylics until next year though.

Cutt’s Island

In the winter and spring I fish a lot of saltwater and one of my favorite beaches is at Kopachuck State Park.  This is the view from the main point there looking out at Cutts Island in Carr Inlet.  We kayaked out to this island years ago and I found that the big sand bars off the island held good sized halibut and searuns and salmon can be found in the waters surrounding the island and the beach.   I was fishing at Kopachuck on Monday morning when the rising sun popped out and lit the island up so I decided to do this as one of my last remaining paintings.   To top it off I got a handful of nice searuns that morning too!

One to go!  Drop off is on Sunday and the show is only a few weeks away.

Tanner Landing Meadow

The third piece from Tanner Landing park, this time looking due east across the meadow.  This was from a  fall trip to fish the Middle Fork when the colors were in full bloom.   Sort of a simple view but I needed a quick painting today to make up for time spent fishing earlier this week.

Getting down to the final few and I’m finally running out of good photos from my fishing trips this year, I need to go dig through Lightroom some more to find material for the last two.  Like a real marathon I hit the point where now I just need to finish but am feeling a bit less creative and fresh than I was at the beginning.  Spending the afternoon getting all the info on the back I need to and starting the real photo process instead of these quick iPhone shots I’ve been posting.