Donald Neff

I am writing this in Carmel, but cannot post it to my weblog as the wifi Internet connection here at my motel seems to be intermittant. So, I will have to post it when I return home after the festival.

I drove down today to participate in the Carmel Art Festival. This is my second year in the show. What basically happens is you have two days to paint two paintings to offer up to an auction process. Although Carmel is only about 90 minutes from my home, I always stay somewhere in the Carmel area. I don’t want to bother with spending 3 hours on the road each day, rather devoting all my focus to the work at hand.

I meandered on my drive down, taking some back roads around Elkhorn Slough to look for places to paint.

I arrived in Carmel midday, and drove down past the town further south on the Pacific Coast Highway to see how the fog was rolling. In this part of California, it is hard to judge where the fog might be from day to day and even hour to hour. Later on, I checked into the motel, the same place I stayed last year, Munras Lodge.

For these plein air competitions, you have to have the back of your canvas (or whatever you are painting on) certified before the contest. They usually stamp it with a date, and put a little sticker on it. This is to ensure no one walks in with a painting they didn’t really paint on location for the show. After getting the canvas stamped I decided to go down to Pt Lobos State Preserve where I planned on doing at least one painting. It was clear, and I hadn’t seen Pt Lobos without fog in quite awhile. I encountered Paul Kratter, another participant, already out painting. He was painting the exact scene I had planned on painting the next day!

I hiked around and found some other potential spots to do the next day.