Last Saturday my friend Dennis and I braved the unseasonal heat to paint in Eaton Canyon. We hiked up a wash and found a spot in the shade of some trees with a beautiful view of the San Gabriel Mountains. I did a few small study sketches, and a finished sketch in my large sketchbook. I used a variety of colors, and positive/negative shapes to convey the layering of bushes, trees, medium distance foliage and distant mountains. Power lines and towers are a part of every Eaton Canyon scene, and I like including them in my paintings. In the late morning we moved to the shade of an immense Sycamore tree to do another scene, this time of a closer, tree-covered hill. It was a good morning.

For a few years now I have been working on my next book entitled Los Angeles Sketchbook. It will be similar to both of my previous sketchbooks: Pasadena Sketchbook, and Redlands Sketchbook, and will be filled with sketches and paintings of Los Angeles. I am currently preparing new images, and continuing to rework previously done paintings. This post contains a few of my most recent works. Some are still being refined. The majority of the paintings are 11” x 14”. A few are 14” x 20”. There will be some Los Angeles River sketches that are 8” x 22” and will span an entire spread. Most of the paintings for the book have been completed, as is much of the copy, and am currently searching for a pub

Last week I attended the annual Saturday in the Park event hosted by the Mid Valley Arts League. It was a beautiful spring day, chilly with scattered clouds. I did another in a series of architectural sketches of the original Ambassador Auditorium, and another version of the timbered house up on the hill. I did my studies in a Stillman and Birn Beta Series sketchbook, and the final paintings on 14” x 20” Fabriano cold press, using both waterproof and water soluble pens, and accenting everything of course with Holbein Titanium White. Time flies by so quickly, and in looking over previous year’s work, I see that I come back to both of these subjects each and every year. Well, next year I shall