Thursday, June 11, 2015

Corvallis - Avery park and ***finally*** painting...

Another gorgeous sunny cool day in Corvallis.  Carolyn and I both had work to do - I was ready to get painting and she had computer stuff to do… but first we took T for a nice walk in Avery Park.

He got to see the dinosaur bones (!) -




..while Carolyn pretended to take a siesta -



Then we saw an 85-long table made from one tree.  It was cool, but kinda made me sad…kept thinking it might be nice if the tree was still standing… it was growing when Columbus "discovered" America.





They had lovely rose gardens - just finishing blooming… and a wonderful type of Walnut tree next to a locomotive that kids (and dogs and me) can play upon.


Woo woo!


Then we took a walk along the river in the shaded woods.  We saw tiger lilies blooming (reminded me of Tiger Lily in Peter Pan) - they were awesome in the morning light!  Carolyn, who knows her plants, says they are called Turks Cap back east…)



And, of course, at the end, T got his moment of Zen in the Marys river (that's not a typo - its Marys without an apostrophe and no one knows why…).  Theo didn't care about the apostrophe.


We got back home about 10 am and got to work.  I decided to work on some Watercolors… got several started and of course by the time I finished I was just getting the hang of it!  

I remember Jim saying "On the third day she paints."  It did seem when we traveled that it took me a couple days to get to know a place an absorb things and then I was ready to paint.  That's one thing that's been missing on this trip so far.  I've had very few "third days" anywhere I've been!  (… and its interesting to note that when I do, I do tend to paint).  So I'm not fighting it anymore.  I'm slowing down and absorbing the images I'm taking in, not stressing about churning out paintings for some arbitrary goal, and will paint when I have time and have soaked in enough of the place in which I'm settled.  S L O W I N G down…  good.

That said, here's what we started today - started with a series based on the vista from Patrick's Point a few days ago.




Then I played around with one of the lake at Dyen near Ukaih, CA...


Then I tried a painting of a tree, river, several other things and just did not like it, so started to just cover it up with color and then went back in and lifted and scratched out areas and played with the watercolor pencils and of course it turns out that the one I liked least, came out as probably the best…





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