Portland Here We Come!!

Alicia asked our friends if Andrea and Shawn if they were up for another visit this Summer and they are.  Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!!  I can't wait to take on Mt. Hood again Mountain Biking with Shawn.  I also can't wait to ride around Portland again.  I think that I'm going to see if Shawn is up for spending a day on the bike just riding around the city with me to take source photos for my paintings.  If he's not maybe I can borrow a bike from him to do it.  I love the scale of Portland and the atmosphere.  It's the only West Coast city that matches my cityscapes within my work.  I think I need to plan a week in Chicago or New York to shoot photos as well.  I've been threatening to and just haven't, but I really need to.

About tonight's offering.  Here's the painting that was leaning against the wall from Saturday's post.  I'm quickly working in the paint and roughing out the areas.  Tomorrow evening I will work in some details with my fine brushes and ink pens.  Probably end the evening with some glazes.  I think I'm going to actually apply some varnish tonight when it's dry enough before I go to bed.  I like to apply the varnish as I go.  This is based on two photos I took of Andrea, Shawn, Alicia and I walking the streets of Baltimore, Maryland when they lived there (the figures in the foreground are left to right Alicia, Andrea, and Shawn).  It was so frickin cold since they were having a Noreaster that year.  That was the title for the first version of this painting.  I just really loved the composition and had some ideas as I was painting that version.  I tend to follow the sage advice of my mentor David Sklar, which was to stay the course on a piece and paint different versions with the ideas you come up with while painting it.