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Challenge painting!

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 For my next painting I decided to paint a picture that was in my photo roll on my phone. I don't know where I got it, but there's no signature on it or name in the info. I tried to track down the owner via two different kinds of AI, but neither of them could find it. Google said it was a sunrise on the west coast (Google's AI sucks, LOL) the Chat GPT said it was near sunset, mostly likely on or near Second Beach, near La Push, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula. It also offered that the photo has been edited and possibly flipped horizontally, and gone through several iterations of copy-save-copy-save. I'm not going to post the picture here until I know for sure whose it is. I did my usual prep for this 24"x30" cradled board (60cm x 75cm for our friends not in the US): Gac100 on the wood to seal it from the oil paint. Apparently wood has bad stuff in it that wreaks havoc on oil paint. Aside: I belong to some groups for painting on Facebook and I am AMAZED at ...
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Art School, winter quarter 2026.

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This quarter I'm taking Design 1 (meh) and watercolor. I started by creating a space in which to do watercolors, since you generally paint them flat.   It's tucked into the corner in my studio, next to my computer desk.  Fittingly, that table on the right is my mother's kitchen table. I feel good in this space, and close to her. You can see in the middle where I have markers organized - those are specifically water-soluable markers, and in the little tiny flat drawers are graphite, pastels, pastel pencils, charcoal, watercolor pencils, colored pencils, and permanant markers, all neatly organized.  The shelves are shoe racks with the middle shelf taken out. The stool is a "leaning stool" so that you aren't putting all your weight on your butt. You can see my porcelain watercolor palette under one of the shelves, and the double porcelain water container on the right.  I love this space. I love spending time in it.  I bought a couple of Baohong blocks: Artist-...
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Sea Stacks

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 Just after the winter holidays we took a drive out to the Pacific Coast of the Olympic Peninsula, to see some sea stacks. Amazing views. I took a ton of pictures, went back to my studio, and mounted a 24x30" cradled board on my newly-acquired Artristic Evolve .   As I usually do, I painted an acrylic transparent earth yellow as a ground,  and drew in the picture with white chalk.  I changed the composition just a bit, running more water through the foreground.  Next, I laid in the sky with quick-dry titanium white, and a touch of phthalo  torquoise, increasing the phthalo torquoise as I got closer to the earth.  Then I mixed into the leftover sky some quinacridone magenta, for the distant stacks.   I always do my skies first, because I then save the leftover sky color into whatever  else I'm painting, creating some color harmony.  I started on the rocks with a mixture of raw sienna, quinacridone gold,  and mixed into that...
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