A New Gouache Painting
The North Fork of the San Gabriel, 8×10, Gouache on Canson Illustration Board
I used to hike down along this riverbed at times when the water was just a trickle and I could step across on a few exposed rocks. We live just the other side of the bank on the ridght side of this picture. In the 2025 floods, the water level was above that high bank, encroaching on the edge of the RV Park. When it’s flooding, it’s a bit scary in its force. When it’s almost dry, it’s a quiet, peaceful place. Painting all the textures on this side of the river has always been one of my challenge.
A New Pen & Ink Drawing
Time does fly. It’s been three weeks since my final cataract surgery. I will need glasses and hope tomorrow to get clearance to be tested for them. Meanwhile, I’ve been wearing “readers” to allow me to draw as well as read. This barn drawing has been done since the cataracts were removed. It is 8×10 drawn with Microns on Fabriano waterolor paper. I’m hoping to do more pen and ink work and more ink and watercolor.
We’ll see.
A Very Short Post
I had cataract surgery on my right eye two days ago so there will be a pause in posting. The laptop screen is very blurry, so I apologize for any typos. I will have the left eye done next week, so this will be a couple of weeks’ interim. On Tuesday, as a test, I did the attached pen and ink drawing of an old tree, primarily to see how my eyes are handling the detail and to give me something fairly quickly done to compare with when everything is healed. I finished it the day after surgery. Sorry it’s not a painting, but I wanted tsomething I could do in a day.
Cheers to all.
Why Tai Chi?
As I make my way into my eighties, I find that being an artist and not exercising is taking a toll on my body. I could walk, but I find walking to be boring and after two or three days, I start slacking off. I tried the gym years ago, but I hated it. Tai Chi has always looked interesting to me. All those people somewhere in Asia or San Francisco, moving in tandem. I started about three weeks ago and it’s been a rough start. Not because it’s hard (although it is), but finding an instructor on YouTube that appeals to me. (Yes, it would be nice to get live instruction, but the budget doesn’t lend itself to it.)
I’ve been pretty consistent in my practice, but so far I’ve been all over the place, following one YouTube teacher and then another. I think I’m settling on Master Chris Pei. He takes a slow, steady approach, explains things well and uses some repetition to help grasp the concepts. On the day I’m writing this, he spent almost an hour just going over warmup exercises. By the end of that, I had used up just about all the steam I had. (Have I mentioned I’m overweight and in really bad condition?) They say that Tai Chi takes a long tune to learn. So there’s another plus: I’ll be practicing patience as I go along. Years ago, I did pen and ink drawings that were highly detailed. Lots of lines and touches with the pen. That took a lot of patience, but I’ve discovered in recent years that I don’t have that same patience anymore. I’ll be curious to see if exploring Tai Chi helps rediscover that patience.
And speaking of patience, I’m finding I need it as I try to regain my touch with gouache. This is a small 8×10 Work In Progress from q photo by Linda Mackay from the Facebook page “Landscape photos for artists”. I’ve bee away from the brushes for too long.
Life In My Eighties
I started this blog 17 years ago, and if the WordPress stats are correct, I’ve published over 500 posts. There have been some breaks along the way, but a few people have stuck with me. I think my introduction to social media was WetCanvas.com, an online forum for artists. My focus there was painting with goucahe, and for some time, I was pretty active. In 2009, I wrote a little book titled Becoming A Painter In Only 45 Years. You can find it on the Blurb.com website. It’s basically an autobiography of my journey from watching my Dad doodling in church to my beginnings as a painter.
My latest book, Wake The Sleeping Giant, is a novel, a political thriller set in present day America. A work of fiction, it follows a middle class family caught between the U.S. government and a growing militia movement. A full-length novel at 454 pages, it is self-published and available through the Blurb website here. I’m updating the book list for this blog’s menu. More about the book in a later post. We think it’s a good read.
In between was a graphic novel, Finding Katya and three children’s books, two about the adventures of Sherwin the Snail and one about a Lonely Troll. There have been other books as well, one about my use of gouache and a book of barn paintings. All published through Blurb.com.
I’ve never been very good at maintaining a routine, but I’m trying to establish a new one that will let me do the things I enjoy, keep my mind active and improve my physical well-being. I’ll try to include a painting with each post. We typically watch TV after dinner and I multi-task by sketching. I’ve got a lot of sketchbooks that are only partially used.
We have a couple of large tubs in storage that are filled with artwork: drawings and sketches, paintings in gouache and acrylics. Would we like to sell it? Of course, but I’m not much of a marketer. Whatever doesn’t sell will be up to our kids and grandkids to decide what to keep and what to destroy. I mostly keep the things I like, but we live in a limited space, so we can’t display them in our home.
So hopefully you’ll join me once a week and I’ll try to keep things interesting.
Meanwhile, here’s a gouache portrait done several years ago.
Cheers.
Change Is Coming
At the risk of losing anyone who is still with me, I will be making some changes to the blog. I considered starting a new one, but this one has so much content, I don’t want to lose it. This blog has been focused mainly on my artwork and methods. The major subject was the use of gouache and I gained a lot of satisfaction in the number of people I heard from who appreciated the information and the paintings. Along with that have been a lot of drawings and sketches and some exploration of acrylics.
I have completed a number of major projects and, looking forward to my 82nd year in January, I find myself in some sort of odd transition. I still love producing art and books, but want to inject some other things into my life. A few years ago, I taught myself to play a little bit on the piano (electronic keyboard). Nothing grand or earthshaking, but I could stumble my way through a jazz/blues version of maybe a half dozen songs, mostly old standards. Then Nell and I took off on our grand adventure of living and traveling in a 36 foot motorhome. The motorhome was loaded with all the gear for a 10×10 art festival booth, so the keyboard, a full size 88-key version just didn’t fit and was passed down to a grandson. That was about 15 years ago and I find I’ve lost a lot of my limited musical ability. I bought a smaller keyboard several years ago, but haven’t worked very hard at it. I really want to play a few tunes again, which means relearning some chords and the ability to play from lead sheets (something to be explained in a future blog post).
Something else I have always had an interest in is Tai Chi and have started trying to learn some of the movements as a form of exercise and hopefully weight loss. Like the keyboard, this is going to be a very slow process, but it’s something I’d really like to do. I may recount what I find in this new adventure as well.
Will I keep painting? Of course, just not as much as I once did. I’ll also continue to work on portrait drawing. And the books. With Nell’s help, I’ve just self-published a full length novel, Wake The Sleeping Giant, a major undertaking which I’ll probably describe in a post as well.
The title of the blog may change little, but will still be recognizable. Watch for it. I enjoy writing and I think by expanding the focus of the blog I’ll be more inclined to maintain it better than in the past few years.
So there you have it. A new direction, hopefully an interesting one.
RP
New Portrait Sketches
While Sherwin The Snail searches for a new home, I’ve also been continuing my development of portrait drawings.
I’m enjoying doing this pencil work again. My preliminary sketches for the books are in pencil, of course, but this is different. It feels a bit more academic. I haven’t really done much of this since my Life Drawing classes in college under Bob Wygant. I’m a bit more heavy handed these days than he was back then, but I’m still enjoying the result. Between this work and Sherwin, I’m getting a pretty good mixture of pencil and ink these days.
Sherwin Returns
I’ve begun a long overdue sequel to Sherwin, A Snail’s Tale. If you’re not familiar with this little book, you can find it on the Blurb publishing site at https://www.blurb.com/b/8809392-sherwin
In this new episode, construction has begun in the peaceful grassland that has been home to Sherwin for years. Joined by his friends, he begins a new adventure: finding a new home.
New drawings are in progress.
More Pencil Portraits
Continuing my portrait sketching education. (I apologize if some of the images are turned wrong. I’m having trouble rotating some of them.)
Having fun with these. I’m not necessarily getting great likenesses, but that’s not my goal yet. Just getting well proportioned, realistic faces is the main reason for doing these. I’ve tried to paint family members and they’ve almost always been failures. John Singer Sargent once said, “Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”
I don’t like drawing or painting people I know. Dogs… maybe. I’ve had better luck getting a likeness of a family dog than of people.
The breaks in posting have occurred recently because I’ve got two other projects going. I’m a glutton for punishment, but I’ve started a short story followup to the Katya graphic novel, and I’m working on a long overdue sequel to Sherwin, A Snail’s Tale.
I’ll be back.
Continuing with Portraits
Not much to say here… just more practice with faces, young and old.
Ralph Parker, Artist 
