El Color Caliente...

The above is the theme of an upcoming show at a Gallery near me. Lately I've been thinking about this. The focus of the show is cultural, but I kept coming up with landscapes:

Arakis/Dune or Big Bend Desert Sand Storm 8X10

and

14X18 Acrylic, unfinished

the second one was not ready for the show. There are dried chilis to hang and rugs hung out to air, chimney pots to add, rungs, values to balance, oh the list goes on. I entered the first one and:

Chili's 8X10,acrylic, painted this morning.

When I took the picture the shadows all bleached out. This is without the flash, too.
After double checking the painting I found that they're there, somehow I didn't catch them with the camera. The submissions for the show were emailed in, and of course no one else will paint chili peppers, oh no.
Perhaps Photoshop could help me.

Maybe not. Best to use live submissions until I get the hang of this.

Lately I've been doing a lot of pen and ink sketching. Just got a fountain pen by Pen and Ink Sketch, a fine point. It's a delight! It has one of those adapter things so you can use bottled ink, or cartridges. So far I've used up three cartridges so I'll get a bottle of fountain pen ink to save a bit. Most ink at art stores seems to be for dip pens, so the search is on.

End of Summer in Wine Country

Napa Valley Wine Country, early Summer

Earlier this summer I did this little (6X8) watercolor by the roadside in the California Wine Country. There was still a little Spring green remaining in the leaves of both the vines and the surrounding trees. It really is one of the most beautiful places. As a very small child we lived in northern California, but moved to the Texas desert at about the time I entered school. So most of my child hood memories are the spectacular and rugged mountains upthrust from graben faulting (geology minor, sorry) as the mid-continent sea dried up. Mainly I have memories of hills without trees. Frequently when people first see the desert, that is one of the first remarks, "I've never seen a hill without a tree on it." This used to sound very odd to me, all they had to do was look up. Ah, childhood, things were so simple then.

Is it time for a trip back to the desert? I think I'm missing it's kind of beauty. Or is it the Sunshine in the mornings? Hmm, I hope this isn't a pattern, I've lived a lot of places and some are not easy to get to. I, and my non-existent travel budget could be in big doo-doo. Maybe if I could put it down as a business expense. Alas, first there has to be a budget before you can "budget" something. Well, that's what my mother taught me, and mothers tend to be right. Hmm. I should probably do some deep philosophical thinking about that. Nah, too many people with nothing better to do have already done that and just confused themselves. Besides, it takes away too much painting time. I had dear parents who did the very best they could to raise us right and with all the love in the world. "Now" is a gift to which they contributed much, and Now is when I am living! So I shall live Now. And, paint of course.

Where did all that come from? (shrug) Fagedaboudid.