Fall Foliage

"Blue Heron Lake," wc/ink on paper, ~8.5X3.5

Saturday the sketch group went to the Raccoon River Park in West Des Moines, an enormous multi-use facility that features Blue Heron Lake, fishing, boating, swimming, softball, a dog park, and a lot more. I sat on the west side of the lake and sketched the opposite bank, where grasses and trees have just begun to show fall color. The day was perfect.

Ten Years Ago

"False Dawn, Union Square," oil on panel, 16x20

This cityscape is a view of the subway station entry on the west side of Union Square in lower Manhattan. The sun hasn't risen but its light is creeping over the horizon. To my eye the roof looks a lot like our popular concept of a flying saucer.

Spanish Lighthouse

"Almeria. The Light." wc/ink on paper, 3.5x5

This little watercolor dates from a few years ago. We sailed the Spanish coast and islands for about a week,  visiting small ports and savoring the food and wines. This is a view from our ship while anchored.

A Rare Pastel

"Egon, Dead," pastel on paper

Although I have a few old pastels from two or three decades ago in my files, I've done far fewer than my other works in oil and so on. This one floated into memory today. It's a bit rough, being one of my first pastel paintings twenty-five years ago. It's after a death photo of Egon Schiele, the young artist whose work was sometimes considered scandalous (he was even briefly jailed for some of it--click the link for a bio) and who died in 1918, before he was thirty, of influenza.
 

Autumn at Whiterock

"Autumn at Whiterock," oil on panel, 9x12

This landscape was done as a plein air work just about a year ago, at the Whiterock Conservancy. The October colors out there are simply luscious.

Wading

A new landscape, begun last summer as a plein air sketch and completed in the studio. The setting is a river in southwest Virginia. 

"Wading," oil on panel, 9x12

 

Art Center Sketch

This is a sketch of the Des Moines Art Center, from the northeast. Last Saturday many of our sketch group stayed at Greenwood Park, which is home of the Art Center. Architectural subjects are an interest of mine, and I've done a number of views of the buildings, mostly from the rose garden and other southern spots. 

"Des Moines Art Center," wc/ink on paper, ~13x5

You can see the Richard Meier building on the right side and the Saarinen building to the left. The latter was completed in 1948 and the Meier in the 1980s. I like the contrast and the seeming zoom of sidewalk into the center.