I am still trying to master watercolor so I made a couple of watercolor sketches. On top is the caretakers house at Haceta Head with the Cape Creek bridge in the background. The house in now a fancy B&B. The sketch below it is the Florence bridge again.
On top is the bridge looking west from a small park in Florence. 
This is another oil painting of the understructure of the bridge in Florence. I seem to be attracted to the yellow/violet-orange/blue crossed complements lately, or else I just wanted to use up my palette. I'll also show some sketches of the entire bridge from my Moleskine sketchbook that I recently started.
Every year V&V takes a two or three day painting trip to some destination in Oregon. This year about 20 of us went to Florence where we were joined by a few other painters from similar groups in other Oregon locations. Haceta Head is a bit north of Florence and I have visited here many times in the past. This year I made this oil painting looking right up at the lighthouse. Many of the paintings on this day included the lighthouse.
This view of the old Pix Theater was from another Wednesday outing with Vistas & Vineyards. Again I tried to replicate a watercolor wash but using oil paint over an ink wash on canvas board. I am thinking that watercolor might be a better medium for this technique. I spent more that an hour standing in the street making the original sketch. For the final sketch I used some photographs as a reference.
This is my latest watercolor and is based on a photograph I recently took on a trip to Berkeley, Calif. It is the French Hotel which is a small quaint place close to the UC Campus. I passed it every day on my way to school in the 1960's and never noticed it. Painting forces one to see things one would overlook otherwise. I used very little water for this piece in order to achieve the bright colors. I am trying to learn the style of Charles Reid, one of my favorite contemporary painters. I like it so I will probably focus on watercolor this summer.
This is Pong MD. MD stands for "My Dog". I made this oil painting a few months ago and it now hangs in our family room . We have two pugs, Ping and Pong, and they both find their way in many of my sketches. The original oil is 20X24 inches, the original Pong is only about 5X6 inches. Pong is only intimidated a little by his portrait.
This is a painting I did a couple of weeks ago. It is of the historic Whiteside Theatre and is based on an old photo from the county historic archives. As an experiment I began with an exaggerated ink sketch using a Sharpie extra fine pen on a canvas board. I used a Sharpie because it is permanent from both water and mineral spirits. Then I used light washes of oil paint to add color in such a way that the ink is still visible. I blotched the paint with a paper towel to increase the funky effect. The idea was to be able to frame the piece without glass as an oil painting.
I just completed the watercolor of the dead tractor from the Garden of the Woods. The tractor has seen better days as you can see from the tube hanging out of the tire rim. This is the first watercolor painting in about a year. However it is more of an illustration, but I like the style. Based on a photograph I took, I used light pencil and then my pen to make the sketch on 140 CP Arches Watercolor paper. I will be doing more of this style in the future.
This past Wednesday our Vistas & Vineyards group visited Garden of the Woods. I chose to sketch this arbor because I like the shapes and it was a rainy day so painting was not going to be much fun. I used my favorite pen, a Pilot P-500 along with a water brush containing water and a drop of ink. I also sketched an old tractor which I plan on turning into a watercolor painting later.
