At right is my final version, titled "Passage".  I chose to use a "soft focus" approach to the bridge, trying to give it the effect of being bathed in light.  I rearranged trees and boaters to assist the composition. This painting recently won juror Alexis Lavine's "Top 3" award in the "Windows, Doors, and Gates" exhibit at the Butridge Gallery, Dougherty Arts Center, in Austin.  The exhibit, which includes three of my paintings, will be up from July 9-August 4, 2014.  The gallery is open M-Th from10:00AM-9:00PM, Fridays 10:00-5:00, Saturday, 10:00-2:00, closed Sunday.  There will be a reception July 16, 2014, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.  I hope that you can come!

The way I work has been slowly evolving over time.  Gradually, I have come to realize that the advice of my teachers to do a value sketch before I start to draw on my watercolor paper really IS a good idea.  I am trying to do more of my sketches plein air, but often, when on vacation, that is not practical.  The day we visited Cerro Castellan, in big Bend National Park, it was August and very hot, so I tried to take the best photographs I could of this dramatic volcanic formation.

Recently, I have added the step of making a color sketch before touching my watercolor paper and paints.  This allows me to experiment with color combinations and object placement.  These sketches are small, only 5"x7", and done in watercolor pencil.  I draw the shapes in lightly with pencil, then add color with the watercolor pencils.  Next, I wet the colored areas with a brush, and spread the paint around a bit.  When the paper dries, I add final details with watercolor pencil, and sometimes pen and ink.  Since these are just experiments, I can work without much stress.

My goal with this little sketch is not to record details, but to work out the placement of shapes and values.  I decided that Cerro Castellan had to be the darkest value in the picture.  I moved the mass of vegetation from left to right to better balance the picture.  I also moved "Santa Elena Canyon" a little to the left, so it would be a recognizable element of the picture.  It is a landmark that is visible from many points in the area.

    As summer comes on, and the usual spring rains do not appear, it becomes evident that the drought is still with us.  Reminders are everywhere.  The one that resonates with me personally is the image of the Dead Madrone.  For my most recent Madrone painting, I used a brush instead of pouring, so that I could get more intense reds and yellows in the branches.  My inspiration for this color choice was my memories of science labs in my teacher days.
    When I was a high school science teacher, one of the labs I did was to burn steel wool, in order to demonstrate that burning is a chemical reaction between a substance and oxygen.  Students were asked to record their observations of the steel wool burning, and to record the mass (weight) of the steel wool before and after burning.  They were always surprised to find that the steel wool weighed more after burning, because of the addition of oxygen to its chemical formula.  During the burning process, the color of the steel wool changed from yellow in the hottest parts, to orange, then red, and finally a bluish grey as it cooled.
    I used these colors to describe the dead tree, burning slowly in the summer sun as it gradually decomposed.

    I have loved this little tree for many years.  Madrones are beautiful trees with red, exfoliating bark, elegant twisting branches, and bright green foliage.  They are truly wild things:  difficult to cultivate, they resent being transplanted and will sicken when watered with treated city water.  Madrones have to be appreciated as and where encountered, on their own terms.
    This particular madrone inhabited the edge of a scenic pull-out in Big Bend National Park.  I always looked forward to sighting my old friend as I neared the end of my 10 hour drive from Austin to Big Bend.  Because I only make it to the park every year or two I was not there to witness its final struggle as another victim of the Texas drought.
    Its dead remains, still standing in the spot by the pull-out, were a shock to me when I visited in the fall of 2012.  Even in death the tree was an elegant natural sculpture, standing as a decaying witness to the losses of drought and climate change.  Friends who have recently visited the park tell me it is still standing there, quietly disintegrating into the landscape.
    The image of the Dead Madrone finally made its way into a painting in the fall of 2013.  Recently, I have finished a second Dead Madrone, and a third is in progress.
    Update:  the third painting , "The Dead Madrone III" has been completed.

    Every year, spring brings on a form of insanity in me.  I become a compulsive gardener.  Although my rising time the rest of the year is 9:00 am or later, in the spring I get up with the sun, and can't wait to get out the door and dig in the dirt. 
    I prefer to paint the things that are close to my heart, and I try to have my camera ready whenever I am outside.  You never know when a painting will suggest itself.  As nice as photographs are, they tend to do a better job of telling how a scene LOOKS, as opposed to how it FEELS.  So my challenge in painting a scene is always to express as much about how it feels as how it looks.  Given that I love to experiment, and that I am never 100% satisfied with any one painting, I often find myself painting a series of different approaches to the same subject.

For the first painting, "Spring Geraniums I", I decided to use poured color.  After the initial drawing, I used liquid latex to mask the areas I wanted to remain white.  I then mixed containers of three primary colors, by combining tube watercolor with water and mixing until it is about the thickness of milk.  I then wet the paper with a sprayer, and pour small amounts of the paint on.  The colors I chose were quinacridone red, cobalt blue, and gamboge.  The trick is to let the colors flow and mix unevenly. 
    After the first layer of paint dries, I then mask the lighter areas with latex.  When the mask dries, I wet the paper and pour some more of my three colors.  I repeat the masking and pouring process, until I have most of the paper masked, and am just pouring my darkest darks.
    When the paper is bone dry, I remove the latex mask, and apply final details with a brush.
    After painting version I, I began to wonder what it would look like if I did a version of the scene using a vertical orientation, with a narrowed view.  I changed the placements of some things, notably the decorative detail on the pots.  For "Spring Geraniums II",I chose to use the same pouring technique, and  the same three colors as before.  No matter how hard one tries, no two paintings come out the same, and in this case, the same colors provided more contrast in the picture.  This painting is called "Spring Geraniums II"

    For my third version of the scene, I wanted to paint with brushes.  I used the same three colors as before, with the additions of raw sienna, sap green, cobalt turquoise, and french ultramarine blue for the darkest darks.  I decided to add a nozzle to the hose to make it more interesting.  The result was "Spring Geraniums III".  I am not sure if I am done painting this series, or which painting I like best.  I will have to let them sit for a while and come back and look at them.

This was a tough winter, not just climatically, but artistically.  Living in the South, I'm used to Spring starting to happen in February, and look forward to planting my garden and driving around looking at nature.  Not this year!  Winter stayed very late, while my garden tools gathered dust in the garage.  My attempts at painting all went awry, No one will ever see those, except as recycled collages!  I tried looking through my store of photos for inspiration, but nothing seemed right.
    Then I hit on the idea of painting my frustration.  I realized that I had been spending waaaaay too much time staring out the kitchen window looking at sleet and rain.  The potted tulips I always buy as an early harbinger of spring were starting to look ragged,  Household chores were piling up(depressing, ugh), and the little light that was coming through the windows was filtered through rain and frost.  The composition for "Not Quite Spring" was born.
    The most difficult part was depicting the light coming through grungy, frosty, rain-drippy windows.  I used salt to create some of the 'frost" patterns.  In addition, I dropped rubbing alcohol into the wet paint in places to create disturbed areas that might be ice crystals, and ran beads of water down the window area of the painting.  I was careful not to paint too evenly, and to concentrate the pigments around the edges of the window panes, letting the winter "light" shine through the rest.