Dawn Pond

This is a scene I painted before, this time with morning light. Pretty much the last I'm painting this way. Recently I discovered Lead white paint and I really like the wai it handles. Also I've fallen under the spell of a few great painters and I'm exploring some new avenues.

View over the pond

Nice title eh?

This ones pretty tight detail wise. Many things I like about the piece and a few I don't. We'll see how much longer I stay with the perk ponds. I know I could paint them till the day I die but I'm going on vacation soon and I expect to find some great scenes. Odds are I'll want to paint them but well see.

Los Gatos Creek

We're looking down on the creek here that runs along the ponds on one side with the freeway on the other. A challenging view to paint tho it looks pretty easy now it's done ;-)


There's a good bit of detail in this piece, in the foreground especially. I've been playing with the amount of detail in my paintings. I don't want too much but a bit here and there is nice. I try to err on the side of less not more. In my earlier pieces it was not as much of an issue but now that I can control the paint better I goota watch it....

Flower Pond

Late spring, early summer. There were lots of these white flowers everywhere.

A tale of two paintings

Finished this one last weekend. This is the western side of the biggest pond. I like the tree here and the path leading up to and around it.


I like it so much that this is the second time I painted it. Here is the same scene painted in the spring.

This painting resides in the collection of a friend now. It was the first I painted on Luan panel. The panel in this case I'd gessoed with house primer. I like this painting but I can't say I liked that slick hard surface for painting. After this one I painted on the raw wood for a while.

Now I use clear acrylic gesso that I sand down. I really enjoy that painting suface as it feels just like painting on wood and it pulls the paint off the brush real nicely...

Sky Pond

Ah... June is sweet here this year. Hasn't been too hot. This scene is at the corner of one of the ponds. I definitely gravitate to the corners as the compositions are more interesting than a straight on view.

This was a cloudy day but pleasantly so. I really enjoyed painting the cloud's reflections in the pond. I would have posted this one last week when I painted it but the lower right hand side of the painting was bothering me so I added some grass there and I'm much happier now.

I'm forgetting if I mentioned in an earlier post but these are all part of a series I'm doing. Basically the series is 100 6x8 paintings. I'm trying to keep the focus on the Campbell perk pond area too. Not sure if I can pull 80 more paintings out of there without getting redundant. I think its possible though. Cant guarantee that I'll even want to paint that area for that long either but we'll see. This painting is # 19 I may start just labeling the posts with these numbers as I'm running out of "pond" titles.

Perk Pond

You can see these trees from the other side as you cruise down Highway 17. This part of the park follows the freeway for about 1 mile.


I really liked the green pond scum in this scene. It's more vivid on the actual painting. Lots of detail in this one. I really try not too get too carried away with detail. I think it's best to capture the mood and feel of a scene and let the viewer supply the detail from their imaginations...