Chore Day, August 28, 2021

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Chore Day arrived again. As usual, I vacuumed the house and did the laundry. I thought of making some vegan cheese sauce, but that seemed like more than I could handle. I’ll do it tomorrow. At 3 pm I tried sketching but fell asleep. I also thought of spending 30 minutes studying Swedish, but didn’t have the will or energy of open the book.

On the other hand, I went for a one hour family walk this morning. We took our usual route and walked up to Ridge Road. There are sensational views of the mountains and canyons. With the smoke we experiencing, there are magnificent examples atmospheric perspective as the Siskiyou Moutains fade into the smoke.

Swedish is a fun language with many words shared with English. The spelling and pronunciation are tricky but learnable with lots of study. After 30 minutes of study, my brain feels like it’s been through a heavy weight session at the gym. Learning is hard work.

Al Fresco Art Club Aug 25, 2019 -- Gouache Painting of the Siskyou Mountains from Memory

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Today’s art club challenge was to paint anything using gouache. I’ve been shying away from gouache for years, but now the look has great appeal, and I find that I can’t get the look digitally. I want to give gouache a try in my future children’s books and I know the most reasonable way to get the look is to use the real stuff.

I bought scant palette of seven colors: cadmium red and red light, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, and cadmium orange, as well as some titanium white and zinc white. I painted the view of the Siskiyou Mountains, as I see them from my back yard, from memory. I was going for a purple haze for the atmospheric perspective, but I wasn’t able to mix the color I wanted. I see now that I was on the right track, but I could have mixed in more white.

When the painting hour was over, I felt that I’d broken some long standing ice. I liked my painting. My dread of real painting with real paint was lifted. I could see that my fear of creating an ugly painting had kept me from taking the plunge. Fear is such a waste of time.