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My week last week was quite frustrating....

I think of myself as fairly technologically adept, but lately a myriad of technological issues have come up to keep me frustrated!! On Monday my ISP (TIME WARNER CABLE) was down in my area the entire freaking day!!! It annoyed me to no end but also made me realize how much I enjoy "playing" with the computer.... email, blogging, surfing, etc. None of which I could do without Internet capability.

But I COULD paint, so I settled down with a scene I had selected near China Cove, in Monterey CA. There were so many lovely places where we painted during the workshop with Brian Blood last fall. Of course there are beautiful scenes just about everywhere... the joy is in discovering them! I decided to try painting this landscape over a board toned with black and it worked surprisingly well. I've done several paintings using a black toned canvas since I watched a few of the video segments that Karin Jurick posts about her methods. Usually for landscapes though, I like to tone the canvas sort of an ochre or burnt sienna or rust so that it can be seen through the paint and sort of offers a glow to the painting. However, the black worked surprisingly well by immediately providing a dark over which I could add the lights and see the interesting notan shapes emerge. (Makes me realize I need to look for those shapes more regularly!!) I painted all day and part of the next day. I was really pleased with my painting!! ... a happy camper so to speak.

And then the technology gremlins stepped in again. I could NOT get a decent photo of the darn painting to save my soul. I had taken one which had decent color in the evening before but the painting wasn't finished. I took a whole lot of photos after I finished trying to get one with the correct colors and which didn't have the wavy line look....