Yesterday I finished up the commissioned painting (which I will post once the loving gift of the artwork has been received) and as I putzed around my studio and sprayed the piece with fixative (outside, very toxic) and waited it for to dry, I pulled out my phone to view my photos and decided to do a quickie watercolor and pastel of the lovely wildflowers just starting to bloom in the East Bay hills at Vargas Plateau near Sunol where I had plopped myself down at a viewpoint hoping to spot the resident Golden Eagles. Saw many more cows than eagles (along with ravens and meadowlarks and red tails and kestrels!), and a bovine portrait or two might end up in a future painting. In that park, ridges of rocks pop out of the hilltops looking like dinosaur spines and since these days parks are way busier than usual, I got to say hello to few hikers and bike riders while there with my scope. I took a few pics of these very pink, small flowers, growing like a mat on the ground, and since my main watercolor supplies live in my home, not my studio, I improvised with colors I don’t usually use, adding chalky pastels once the paint was dry, keeping things quick and spontaneous. It was more a time-filler than anything else, which supports my theory that the less I try to produce “good art,” the better the results as I liked how this one turned out.

And here’s another puzzle — my moods currently ping all over the room, in my time of loss and grief, and I’m mystified at how I can flip from joyful dancing and painting and arting with the tunes of Otis Redding or the Temptations in my earbuds to, 5 mins later, sitting in my studio chair, weeping. We humans are weird. They were good days last week, both out in the hills and in my studio.

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9″ x 9.25″ watercolor, pencil, pastel on paper = $85