Donald Neff Weblog

I was honored for the eighth time to participate in the Carmel Art Festival. The show works like this: the artists have two days to paint at least two paintings to offer up for auction. You must have the back of your canvas (or whatever you are painting on) certified before the contest. They usually [...]

The 2nd Annual Plein Air Convention was held in Monterey, CA this year. I missed the first convention last year in Las Vegas, but since Monterey is only 90 minutes from my home, certainly couldn’t miss this one! I registered for the convention quite awhile ago, but then a month ago they added me to [...]

We just returned from a two week cruise to New Zealand and Australia on the Diamond Princess. We flew into Auckland, NZ, then headed down the east coast of New Zealand visiting Tauranga, Picton, Wellington, Akaroa, and Dunedin. Our ship then circled around the southern end of the south island, and we spent a day [...]

So here was the deal: My wife wanted to spend New Years in Las Vegas with some of her family, and I agreed to go under one condition– she could fly with them, but I wanted to drive and then spend time painting in Death Valley and around Lone Pine, CA, on the way home. [...]

It’s been 3 years since my last autumn trip to the Yosemite High Country. I mentioned this to my best buddy from grade school so he flew out from Florida, and the two of us took off in the RV for a week. We agreed to concentrate on the high country, but he hadn’t been [...]

Once again, I participated in the Los Gatos Art Festival this year. It was five days of non-stop activity! Below is a summary of each day. TUESDAY Tuesday morning was time to stamp the back of the canvas to ensure all paintings were done during the festival. I arrived at about noon, got my canvas [...]

Just returned from the Carmel Art Festival. The weather this year was great, and it was good to meet old artist friends and make new ones! Below is a brief day by day post on the experience… Wednesday Drove down to Monterey/Carmel to participate in the Carmet Art Festival. After checking into my motel, I [...]

Prologue: As mentioned in my previous blog, I originally intended to write one blog entry a day during last weeks workshop with Marc Hanson at Scottsdale Artists’ School, but for some reason could not upload pictures to my weblog from my laptop. For those who follow me on Facebook, I was able to upload some [...]

First off, that is not my painting. I have always admired Marc Hanson’s work from afar. I have never met him, nor seen any of his paintings in real life and have only seen his work on the Internet. What draws me to his art is his magical ability to make a seemingly mundane, common, [...]

I recently returned from a trip to South America. Other than a visit to Cartegena, Columbia, last November on a cruise to the Panama Canal, I had never been on the continent. We did a packaged land tour, round trip from Miami, and visited Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. We had free time on the tour, [...]