Month: May 2018

This Year Was Different

March 3, 2024 / By

AKA Dronin’ the Festival

This year was different. For the thirteenth year, I participated in the Carmel Art Festival. But this year, I have a drone. So I produced a short video of the spectacular California coast around the Carmel/Big Sur area while I was painting. It is one of the spectacular coastlines in the world. First, enjoy this short video “Dronin’ the Festival”…

In plein air competitions such as this, you have several days to paint at least two paintings, which are then auctioned off. The festival coordinators stamp the back of the canvas to ensure all work is done in the two days allotted. I won’t go into a detailed diary of the week like I have in past weblogs, but just a synopsis and a few pictures below, some of which are also in the video.

Wednesday evening, after having my canvases stamped, I headed to Perkins Park in Pacific Grove to start a painting of the sunset. I only had enough time to block in the major areas before the sun went down.

At the crack of dawn Thursday, I headed down the coast to Garrapata State Park, one of my favorite places to paint. I decided to do another Vertical Water scene, a bit like the one which won an award last year. The morning sun was lighting up Point Sur many miles down the coast and made for an interesting composition.

Then, in the afternoon, I went up nearby Palo Colorado Road and painted the redwoods. It was nice to get out of the wind along the coast and hug a tree for the afternoon (at lease figuratively!).

Friday morning, an old friend, Scott Loftesness visited, and I did a small piece in Perkins Park again. It was a cloudy day with a little drizzle, but the sun was hitting some spots in Monterey Bay which gave the painting more interest.

That afternoon I spent touching up, and framing the four paintings.

I sold two at the festival…not the best year, but good enough! Click on the thumbnails to see the title and size of each painting.

Point Sur, 24×12,oil on canvas
Perkins Park Sunset, 8×16, oil on panel
Palo Colorado Redwoods, 16×12, oil on panel
Misty, 6×8,oil on panel

Exhausted

May 7, 2018 / By

AKA Touring the Great Cities of Eastern Europe

St Nicolas Church, Prague. 8x10, acrylic on canvas
St Nicolas Church, Prague. 8×10, acrylic on canvas

Some of you who follow me on Facebook realize I just returned from a trip to Eastern Europe. For security reasons I generally don’t like to advertise on social media we are out of town, but can’t resist posting a few pictures here and there.

I won’t turn this blog into a travelogue, but we took a fixed tour round trip from New York City to a number of Eastern European cities. We visited Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, and Helsinki hosted by smartour.com. Although it is dubbed ‘Eastern Europe’ from a western viewpoint, they consider themselves ‘Middle Europe’, and if you look on a map, they are right.

On these tours, you are constantly on the go, walking, busing, etc. and whatever free or downtime you have is used to rest up for the next leg. In Prague, for example, we spent a solid 4 hours walking from the castle area, all the way down and across the river to the old town…over cobblestone the entire way. Every evening I plopped in bed exhausted from the days events.

As always, I carried a little acrylic paint kit. Acrylics are much easier to travel with internationally, as they dry quickly, and are easily cleaned up with water. With oils, you need turpentine which is not allowed on an airplane so you have to buy it at your destination…a tough feat. Oils also dry slower so you have to carry dry boxes, etc.

I only had enough time to do a few paintings, one in Budapest, and one in Prague.

In Budapest, I took the tram from our hotel to Margaret Island, which is in the middle of the Danube and is basically a city park. I did a view of the Margaret Bridge. The painting turned out just OK, but it was fun sitting there for a few hours and watch the Danube flow by. BTW, the Danube is anything but ‘beautiful blue’. It is a muddy brown, although in the painting I made it a little more blue than it was. A lot of pollution is still dumped into this famous waterway.

Margaret Bridge across the Danube
Hungarian Parliament in Budapest
Jogging track with a view
Margaret Bridge across the Danube

My second painting opportunity came the last day in Prague. If you have been there, it is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe as it wasn’t bombed in WWII and many buildings date back to medieval times. It’s also jammed with tourists.

We did a lunch cruise up the Vltava River, and afterwards I stayed on the boat dock while the others went shopping. I spent a little over an hour on a study looking across the river to the St Nicolas church. It was a bit of a cloudy day, but I think this one turned out quite a bit better, and is shown above.

View across the Vltava River of St Nicolas Church
Painting kit on the Vltava River dock
Painting kit on the Vltava River dock

The little studies I do on these trips are my favorite souvenirs. I joke with my fellow travelers, instead of wondering where a souvenir actually came from (e.g. China), for example, I can say it was made right in Prague by American hands.

Coming up, the Carmel Art Festival next week, so stay tuned!

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