Donald Neff Weblog

I just found out the Carmel Art Festival is canceled this year. That’s a little disappointing as I always enjoyed the show and usually did fairly well in it. According to their web site, all artists scheduled this year will be guaranteed in next years show, so maybe see you there next year! Pebble Beach [...]

I finally got around to touching up and photographing some of the plein air paintings I did in Yosemite last February (here, here, and here). Below is the result. Snowy Cathedral * 8×16 Half Dome over the Merced * 12×10 Sentinel Rock * 12×9

I have long been an advocate of the bigger the brush you use the better. For most of my paintings, even the smaller ones, I use a #10 bright, which is about 3/4 of an inch wide. To quote John Cogan, “get the largest brush you can possibly use for the job, then use the [...]

For all of you who are looking for fairer treatment with art auctions and tax write-offs, you might want to go online and sign this petition: Artists’ Deduction Bill: This artist deduction bill (S.548) would give artists the right to deduct the fair market value of their work when donating it to a charity. We [...]

Just received word, I am juried into this plein air show sponsored by the History San Jose association. The paintings must be plein air works of San Jose, Santa Clara, or Silicon Valley and runs from May 4 – September 21, 2008. I don’t do too many paintings of the immediate area, so several weeks [...]

I headed out again to Sand Harbor. I had time to do one quick painting, and then head to James Harold Galleries in Tahoe City to drop off some new paintings. It was another wonderful day! It was mostly sunny with a few wisps of clouds drifting by. I painted a smaller painting at about [...]

Shelly Hocknell Zenter and Bonita Paulis were going to join me painting around Sand Harbor. It was a wonderful day, a few clouds but plenty of sunshine. I decided to do a 16×20, which is about as large as I paint plein air. If it turned out, could be one of my entries into the [...]

The Village Art Gallery at Lake Tahoe’s south shore closed down unexpectedly. The owner was having health problems, and decided to move to a more favorable climate. I made a quick trip up to the lake to get my paintings, and to do a few plein air studies. Shelly Hocknell Zenter, another artist showing in [...]

I visited Cantor Arts Center on the Stanford University campus today. They had a special exhibit called “Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape”. Quite a mouthful, but the emphasis was how artists in the 1800′s were instrumental in opening up the American west to tourism. I met my good [...]

I just saw this YouTube video referenced on Alyson Stanfield’s Artbiz weblog. It’s quite entertaining. All you artists and art collectors should watch it when you have 7 minutes of free time!