I spent two weeks in the south of France in September with a painting group:  17 Americans, just painting every day.   No workshop, no instruction, no critiques.   We did have a show at the hotel at the end and invited quite a few people we had met in the streets, some of whom actually came.  I went with my friend Sharlie Sudduth who lives in Marion Massachusetts and who is fun to paint with, room with and pal around with for a couple of weeks.  And it was heaven to focus on painting for a spell of time.  This is the third trip she and I have gone on together.  Here are some of the paintings I did — all watercolor as usual.

View of the vieux village from a lovely shaded lookout under the Hotel de Ville.

From just down below the little church St. François

View to the Sea with the sun sparkling off the water in the distance.

Looking down the “main” little shopping street in the village.

There are three sections of Bormes:  le village which is the old part where we stayed, le Pin which is the newer part where there are groceries, banks and a pharmacy, and le port down by the Mediterranean.  This is le village with windy narrow “streets”, most of which are too narrow or have steps preventing cars from getting in.

Looking down to the sea from the ruins of a chateau up on top of the hill.

Down in the windy part of the vieux village.

Main shopping street where cars could get through but mostly weren’t allowed.

Different day on the rue Carnot.

Rainy day view from the window of our room.

The harbor and an old fort on the beautiful, tiny island of Port-Cros off the coast near Bormes.

A small shop “La Cueva” up in the winding walkways of the vieux village.

Lovely square in the town of Hyères about 20 minutes down the road from Bormes.

View of the main church from up above.

12th century bridge in the town of Collobrières which is over a steep and windy road from Bormes.

Street scene in Collobrières

Down a windy walk with steps in Bormes

Ruins of an old church in Collobrières.

Still life in class at the Art Students League:  white pitcher, leeks and a funny little ewer.

Value study for one day of the white pitcher.  Emphasis on negative space.

Another experiment in black and white

And more color.

Here is a month and a half of small pictures done in an old book which I bought in Paris and then remade with watercolor paper.   My friend Steve Spang and I challenged each other to do a painting or drawing every day in our books for one month and to send them to each other by email each day.  It worked quite well and we enjoyed the consistency of daily painting.  We’re hoping to do it again, maybe in the fall.  The first one is the cyclamen below which we did together on day 1: 3/12/10.

Cherry blossoms in Central Park after a picnic with Eliza, Ellen and Parker.

I spent a week in June with my friend Sharlie on Monhegan Island taking a workshop from Paul George.  We had sunny warm weather and cold, rainy, misty weather.   I was inspired by Paul to try painting on full sheets of watercolor paper for the first time ever.   A full sheet is 22″ X 30″ and I was able to find and buy 5 sheets from a gallery that sells a few art supplies on the island.   These five are all on full sheets.   This first one was at Fish Beach, I think.   The ferry dock is in the distance.

Manana Island from the porch on a rainy day.

Lighthouse buildings on a sunny day.

Studio at Trailing Yew

Foggy afternoon view over the water.

We hiked across the island over the ridge to a lovely cove called I think Gull Cove and painted for the day.

Above, one more painting from Gull Cove.

We stayed in a charming hotel called the Trailing Yew.  This view of the hotel is of a main building where the kitchen and dining room are on the first floor and some rooms on the upper floor.  My room was in another building where the bathrooms down the hall had electricity and my room had kerosene lamps.

Four still life arrangements, this one with Yuko, my classmate and friend.

Unusual for me to do an abstract one but this combines watercolor and pastel pencil.

Coats and hat moving toward abstraction.

I have been going through a huge pile of accumulated work to figure out what to toss, save or frame.   Very little ended up in the “consider framing.”   Thanks so much to my friend and teacher, Joan Iaconetti, for helping me sort through them.   Could be a depressing process but she helped make it more fun.

I did these orchids from a magazine photo in 2005 sitting in a hotel room in Baltimore before a board meeting the next day.

Pink tulips in Washington Square Park, maybe from 2007.

I did this one in Oakland looking at a tree in my nephew’s (Parker and Hae-Sin Thomas) garden, probably 2007.

Some daffodils in a ceramic vase we have.

Red and purple flowers from the same era.

Tiny roses in a vase I made back when I was still doing pottery.

More daffodils … with pen and ink.

More yellow flowers from 2007.   All these were done before I began this blog.  I put together a whole daffodil yellow palette that spring with at least ten different yellows.   Fun and sunny to play with.

All five of these are bigger than I usually work:  a  full half sheet of watercolor paper.  This first one I was working from a friend’s photograph of a street in Bermuda.

I did a quick sketch of this Central Park Scene last summer and did this in the studio in the fall from both the sketch and the photograph I took.  

Sunset from our deck on Fire Island looking over Clam Pond Cove.

And the view the other way (east) from our deck toward the village of Fair Harbor.

Another piece I did from my friend’s photograph of Bermuda.

And finally a copy here of a painting by a wonderful artist Elizabeth O’Reilly.  The original is better but I had a good time trying to replicate her wonderful shadows on the snow.