I'm taking a class with Vian Borchert, and so far it's been a great help. I'm learning that with watercolors, planning is more than half the battle. With opaque media, you can just paint over your mistakes; with graphite, you can erase, of course. With watercolor, though, you have to get it right more or less the first time, and so developing a plan of attack for each element in a painting before you make the first brush stroke is extremely important. The class is helping me learn to make those plans.

In this beach scene, the impression of sunlight comes from the bright white of the paper showing on the umbrella poles, the piles, and the roof. I had to deliberately plan to preserve all that white as the rest of the image was painted. In this case, I used masking fluid right over the pencil sketch, before any paint had been applied. That way I could paint the sky, water, and sand as unbroken expanses, without worrying about the foreground until the end.

Thanks to Solveig Haugland for the beach photo!

This scene is typical of what you'd see in the Connecticut shoreline towns where I grew up. The majesty of nature mingles with workaday technology to produce rugged but very human views like this one. I've started taking a painting class, and the instructors advice helps. I painted this New England shoreline scene using only four colors, and I was able to loosen up more than usual.

I just got back from a very relaxing week visiting family. The kids were busy and so I had time to do a lot of painting -- three 8x10 watercolors that I'm really happy with. These peppers were from last summer's community agriculture program; these are some of the ones I made into red pepper jelly.