eleven more to go

three hours and six pieces later I only have a handful more to go.  With any luck, I can get these in the mail to art-o-mat next week...!

today's stuff

more art-o-mats

These are mostly from yesterday's drive from the Russian River back home, almost all of which are based on photos taken out the passenger's side window of our car at about 60 mph.  If you got out of the car to see any of these scenes, you'd be flattened, so they are quite rare as far as views go. :)  30 down and 20 more to go...

I've been unable to work on the blog because our phone line and dsl have been down for the last two weeks.  But, in the interim, probably because I haven't had time to be on line (irony of ironies), I've been working on a new project.  

A while back I sent two samples into the art-o-mat project (artomat.org) and soon received word that my work was accepted (thanks, Carol!).  This has been very exciting because I have long loved that project but it's only recently that I realized I could be part of it.  The most intense part has been getting the initial 50 (yes, fifty) pieces together.  In the last couple of weeks, I've done 20.  I'll post them here since I think they counts as my painting-a-day or at least painting-as-often-as possible goal.  So, here goes:  Oops, looks like they posted above and some of them are on their side....I'm still trying to grope my way around this thing.

 

Noodle Factory

This spot is so interesting and so understated.  I would like to go back there and try this again.  

not a good day

Well, not to make excuses but this was painted after a night of no sleep. After a late start getting out of the house, I ended up driving around for an hour looking for a spot with shade and an interesting landscape and then only having an hour and a half to produce something. Once I chose this locale, I was hippened to the fact that I was there on the day the landscaping was being done, complete with a tag team of gas-powered leaf blowers. Also of note is that once I had set up, it became quite obvious I had positioned myself in a well-favored spot for bladder (and possibly other organs' ) relief for passing hobos.

I thought this was interesting because of the way the red of the building was broken up by the regular placement of the yew trees. I wiped out the first try and then came up with this. Once it was down I wasn't happy with it but didn't want to have the day be a complete bust, so kept going.

Composition is so important. You can have the most beautifully painted thing but if it's not placed well on the plane, it will not work. This is an example of bad placement. I'd like to go back and do this again with a better composition. I'm going to focus more on working architecture in to the picture plane, too. And no, that's not a Johnny-on-the-Spot.

West Sac Deep Water Channel

Windy + irate bees = very challenging day. Interesting spot, really raw and surreal. I'd like to go back but under better conditions. West Sacramento is more interesting by the moment.