Daily Painting

Over time, many people have told me that they don't know how to meditate. When some people see my paintings, they say that they wish they could paint. I had this realization today: There is no end goal. The process is everything. The act of sitting in meditation IS meditation. There is no place to get to, to arrive. It is about DOING. Similarly, the act of painting IS painting. I wished I could paint too. Then I did. Who's to say this is a painting, and that isn't? My act of making a painting IS painting, and I end up with a painting. What a huge realization and accomplishment on the same day! Today I meditated AND painted. Yes, my mind wandered a lot, but I sat for an hour IN meditation. And maybe I'm not too pleased with my painting, but a painting it is, and painted I did.   

Driving to San Francisco in early evening and looking at a moody, overcast sky, I realized - what is obvious in hindsight - that the sky sets the mood. Everything on earth wears that mood like a blanket. The sky/sun give us the light, and set the tone of the place. Such power. Here are many recently-done flower studies - no relation to the earlier sentiment/paragraph. I am playing with wateriness, negative shapes, not being precise, and also, for a change, trying my hand at florals and organic shapes rather than buildings and shadows.

I've been drawn to these asymmetrical profiles - my son made that very acute observation from looking at my paintings over the last few weeks that this reminds him of the other. The Chinese gate from Overfelt Park in San Jose - an asymmetrical profile against the sky; this Japanese entrance gate from Hakone Gardens last Thursday - similar profile against the sky; and another plein air that I did yesterday at the Los Altos History Museum after which he made that observation. I am just starting to realize that the interface of one 'object' against the other is what draws the eye first - the building against the sky, the trees against sky, boats against water - back to shapes. There is no need to draw the whole building if the rest of it is symmetrical - in fact it is more dramatic to find the most unusual shape against the sky and stop when that shape starts to repeat. I haven't tested out this theory with multiple subjects, but my gut feeling is that it will hold true. ...

April 10 came and went, and I didn't realize I hit 100 days this year for my daily painting practice. And for another daily too: meditation. It is a cause for celebration! I feel that I have gotten better and more confident with this constant practice of watercolor. Admittedly, sometimes I stress about the painting that hasn't yet happened in the day - and it is not something that should be stressful. But I accept that I am still in the range of not always wanting to paint, but desperately needing to check the Daily Painting box. That's okay. I will allow myself that feeling - and also accept that there is no easy way to make a habit other than to DO IT. This is one of those days where I didn't feel like painting, but had to do a quick one to check that dreaded box. No, it's not that terrible! I do feel that if I paint early in the day, the fact that I am done makes me happy and it doesn't hang over my head that I still need to paint late into the evening when ...

I did this painting last night from a photo I took in Japan last August. I noticed a change in my progress when I looked at the photo: I was aware that I loved the brilliant orange of the rafters and structure. The roofs were grey - but which grey? If the orange is warm, I wanted a cool blue-grey, varied, not constant. This is where water came in to change the constancy. This was very quickly done - it is almost a study. I was so tired last night, but I had to get in my Daily. The thought I had after this painting is that I could explore "Roofs" in a series. I have always been fascinated by a series of works - there is a theme, the artist is probably obsessed with that theme over a few days/weeks, and not scattered over many years {I expect}. The first time I had a thought like this was many years ago in New York, before 2016, and before I started watercolors. I was on a boat with my family going to Staten Island, and saw, in the distance, the skyline and skyscrapers. The p...

The VERY BEST (and almost first) thing I like to do in the morning is walk over to look at the painting I did the previous day. I usually have a feeling for it - a feeling of success/failure, that I rushed it, that there are mistakes, etc. - and what the new morning brings me is almost always a better feeling than I felt about it when I finished it. It is such a boost to the morale - that overnight, this magic will happen. This is my daughter, Anoushka. I wanted to take on a challenge - no buildings or straight lines, and asked her to send me a few pictures with her face partly in shadow. This came out better than expected - I was pretty nervous about getting a likeness, or even a pleasant faced person. There is less room for mistakes in portraits because we are so familiar with human faces, we can instantly see that something is off. Both the husband and the subject said it looks like her. I do see some features slightly misplaced but I'm pleased with the colors and the lights/d...

I had a sudden realization the other day. The reason why limited palettes work is because there is harmony. Each color mix contains the two colors in varying proportions so there is always a base of the common color. Understanding this base becomes more important when using various colors from different tubes. Harmony can still be achieved if you think of a common color as a base. Some artists will tint their entire paper with a light value of a single base color which creates automatic harmony because there is a common underlying layer, but that is not what I mean by base color (though that can be done, and yields pleasing results). What I mean is understanding the base - like a secret color - from the choices you are about to make. For example, if I know I will need a blue, green, and purple for my painting, I could use a pleasing blue, a favorite purple, and a lovely green. But what if they don't have the same base? There won't be harmony. So, start with a pleasing blue, cr...

Further to my post about discovering water - there is the aspect of giving up control. Water does its own thing and it should be allowed to. Let the watercolor happen - don't make it happen. Letting go in life is important too - to be more detached, to be less controlling, and let things be, and to accept it all. On a microscopic scale, that is happening in watercolor. If I'm not too fixed about the outcome I want, I am not so disappointed, and more accepting of whatever happens. This graphic of focusing on what matters is ideal to understanding this. In the same way. letting a watercolor be, and being okay with whatever happens, is important for growth. Each time I paint, I am trying to let go just a little - it helps to spill or spray water on a work in progress just to see what happens, to practice letting go of the attachment I feel for a painting, and I really have no idea what exactly will happen. Each time I do that, though, I brace for the result, and grow just...

I had an early birthday hike on Sunday at Tomales Bay Point. Birthday is in May but we couldn't find a whole day for a family hike that was unencumbered by exams and tests, so this last Sunday at the end of Spring Break was set aside. My favorite, absolute favorite hike ever - Tomales Bay with constant views of the Pacific Ocean on the west, Tule elk on the right, with a glimpse of the occasional fox or snake. At the end of the hike, on a rock over the Pacific, I saw a mama seagull with 60 baby seagulls - they could only hop, not fly. It was a sweet sight - I had never seen a baby seagull before. This watercolor was from a picture I took at Pierce Point Ranch, a cluster of white buildings - very Cape Cod - at the trailhead before we started the 10 mile hike. I love white buildings. I love the opportunities to leave the white of the paper. I came home after this hike, exhausted, and still needed to get in a watercolor for the day, so did this.

As I was driving back from a failed plein air attempt - I carried everything (paintbrushes, water, chair, watercolor block) except my travel paintbox :-| - I was noticing buildings along the freeway and how their mirrored curtain walls reflected the sky, and I enjoyed thinking about how I would paint such a building - let the sky run into those areas, and it would be only the last minute calligraphy (the curtain wall seams) that would tell the viewer that nature has ended and the built has begun. Then I realized how I sometimes use watercolor in a way that goes against its dharma - it has an inherent nature, and the beauty of a watercolor lies in maximizing the innate nature of watercolor, and not making it do things it wouldn't otherwise do - treating it like acrylic or oil, for instance. I don't want to paint photorealistically - and any medium can be made to do that. I want the dharma of watercolor to be foremost - letting water and the natural effects it has with pigment be...

This is from a picture I took in a small town in Iceland - I found it in my Inspiration folder (a greatplace to look when I don't know what to paint). It started off well, but became thick and opaque instead of delicate-tissue-layery [I'm enjoying inventing my own language here, which I understand perfectly well]. I do like the watermarks in the sky but overall, it's missing a lightness of hand that I was pleased with in my recent Granite Rock, Santa Cruz painting. I just noticed the orange boat looks like an alien :-( Now, I've earned my Amazon Prime series - I have been suitably productive with my daily watercolor habit for today.

Further to what I said in 'The history of a painting' where you can retrace the steps through the layers you see in a watercolor, thus every mark you make in a watercolor leaves something behind for the viewer to see. Today I was working with one of my favorite subjects to practice and attempt again: St. Nicholas Church in Los Altos.  It is simple, quick, easy to sketch to do multiple versions, has a beautiful, unusual form with straight lines and curves, and has dramatic lighting and shadows (in the photo I took). I was playing with two things: 1. minimalism - just the bare suggestion of form and minimal palette as well, and 2. my newly-discovered world of watermarks and wateriness. It's strange it took me 2.5 years to discover the water in water color. What I discovered in this exercise is that if the drawing is more or less accurate, and there are enough whites [of the paper], and some dark calligraphic marks, the watercolor should work regardless of how little/much ...

Sometimes I have very little to say. Silence is best in such cases, rather than rambling on. This is the New York Public Library with a backdrop of buildings - a true mix of classical and contemporary.

This is from a picture I took looking up at the Brooklyn Bridge on our walk over the bridge. It is cropped - the picture shows both arched openings but there was no need to paint both and let any non-symmetrical differences be glaring to the viewer's eye. A limited palette - 2 colors, maybe 3, and all their resulting mixes modulated towards warm or cool, watery or opaque - are very pleasing to the eye. This is just two colors - even the blacks are not really black, only a derivative of a thick mix of blue and brown [I shudder that I say blue and brown and not the exact name of the blue and brown from my Sennelier travel box - I'm too lazy to get up and take a look].

"The only constant in life is change." - Heraclitus I was able to keep up the daily painting habit - and posting on Instagram - through our four days in New York recently. I couldn't do plein air as the rest of the family was with me [and would have gone on their phones - a pet peeve], and I would have felt the pressure of finishing, as if there aren't other kinds of pressures already. This quote about life applies to many different things: feelings and emotions which come and go, and if you pay attention, you will be aware of how fleeting they are - in type, in intensity. Maybe you might feel sad for a long time and think it isn't changing, but the intensity is fluctuating constantly. It IS changing. It applies to sensations in the body, as I learned during Vipassana, and the key is to observe the changing sensations and acknowledge that they are changing - old ones are going, and new ones are coming - constantly. Of course, the body sensations are what giv...