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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

Many of you know we just returned from a cruise to the Panama Canal. It was a round trip out of Ft Lauderdale, Florida. Although there is usually not much time to paint on these outings while in port, I always take a small paint set just in case. Although I generally paint in oils, [...]

Last weekend we visited friends, Dennis and Beverly who live in the Sierra Foothills just up the hill from Sonora, CA. Pete, my bike riding buddy, his wife Malou, and my wife, Josie drove up for the weekend. Besides doing the regular Gold Country touristy stuff, on Sunday we drove up to Pinecrest Lake, close [...]