Works from 2000

I enjoy looking at art magazines in the book store. Favorites include “Watercolor” and “Watercolor Magic”. When I find something helpful or inspirational, I buy the copy. In the Winter Issue of 1997 I found an article on how to prepare multi colored background washes for paintings. I tried a few.

This one is of my Christmas Dodo.


I also tried one of a Egyptian scarab.

I was still working in the sketchbook.

Here I return to the Layton skeleton with help from Albinus Anatomy.


The spring of 2000, Leonard Hawkes and I attended National Camp School at Camp Rancho Alegre. While there, I made this sketch of the bank of Lake Janice.

In my classes with Camille I had graduated to working on live models. My son Shaun was kind enough to sit for me.

These are my first and second tries.

The studies at the bottom of my drawing are by Camille herself. She teaches by wonderful example. I treasure them.

I did a few sketches in the spring. A sketch a day is a high standard, even when the while at home. When we headed off to camp that summer, I was determined to make some art. I took my watercolors as well as my drawing pad.

I did one watercolor sketch all summer at Cherry Valley in 2000, Muscles on the Beach.

Back home it went sketching again. This pot-plant form my livingroom. It is my daughter Alison's violet.

I tried to find subjects that let me practice the skills I was studying. These pipes from Layton Creek gave me a chance to consider cylinders in perspective

I tried the zoo again. Sad to say Kali died a few weeks after I sketched her. I wondered if it was a curse.


My friend Trent Warner is a favorite subject. With my return to school, I found time to do some drawings and paintings of him as fall progressed. I was experimenting with all kinds of art.

This first drawing is a “rip off” of a favorite Japanese cartoon (Anime) character, Ranma ½. Trent had just earned his orange belt in Kung Fu and I commemorated his accomplishment.

Trent’s Kung Fu triumph gave me a chance to attempt a work studying the styles of two favorite artist-illustrators, Edward Detmold, and Alphonse Mucha. I greatly admire the Art Nouveau of the last 18th and early 20th centuries. Of course I like the human figure, and Trent.

My classes with Camille were over. She told me she had taught me all she could. I have never been quite sure how to take that assessment, but I tried to move on.

I finished up my Trent cycle with this "sight size" drawing from an enlarged photograph of him taken at the beach at Cherry Valley.


I also brought what I could remember of my training to the University’s Life Drawing sessions every Saturday. I did see some improvement.

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I also took a weekend seminar on Painting Outdoors form Rob McKay. It was through the University Extension. This group of fir trees painted up Immigration Canyon was my effort.

My efforts at art in 2000 ended with this watercolor of “Magnolia Blossoms”, also from a photograph, taken across the trail from my office at the heart of Cherry Valley. I gave it as a gift to my wife and it hangs in our kitchen, one of my only works on display, utill now of course.