The Sentinel Oak

Having finished, or mostly finished, a few paintings recently, I wanted to start something new. I've been out to the Brandywine River near home recently taking a few photos of the river in the dreary gray of winter, with snow on the ground, but I am...fearful...I guess you could say, of trying to paint these scenes.

The Brandywine in Winter

In lieu of diving into one of those, I decided to do a quick painting focused on one color (or color group). That being purples and pinks (and grays).

This is the result. It is an 8 by 10 inch canvas panel, in oils, painted in approximately one hour before dinner. [Photo taken in bad artificial light...]

The Sentinel Oak at Sunrise (8x10, oils on canvas panel)

Comments from Amp, Grace and my sister in law were that it was sad, eerie, ominous and kinda spooky.

I wouldn't, or couldn't, argue with any of these. I'm not sure they align with what my intent was, but perhaps the best thing that can be said about a piece of art is that it invokes an emotional response. If this quick little oil sketch made anyone feel anything, then I should be pleased.

And I like the painting.

One thing I have promised myself is that I will continue to paint in whatever style or subject matter appeals to me in the moment. In this particular moment, at about 3:30pm on a Sunday afternoon, I felt representational and symbolic and not realistic and literal.

So this is what happens. And I'm happy about it.

Across the River

Complete, or at least complete enough.

Across the River (oils, 11 by 14)

I do feel like I am getting closer to where I want to be, and I am starting to find my way...

Painting Progress

On the 15th of February, 2020, almost exactly one year ago, I painted my first-ever painting in oils. Something I have been wanting to do perhaps my whole adult life.

The painting, a Bob Ross inspired mountain scene, was painted without the proper tools, any knowledge of what I was doing, and it was a mess. And I say this with great fondness. It was my first painting. There is a bit of atmospheric perspective between the near and distant mountains...and that's about all the good that can be said about it. Which is fine.

Bob Ross?? (Bob would deny this...)

I went looking for it today, but I think I threw it away a few months ago in a fit of frustration that it was a bad painting, while cleaning up in the basement. Sigh. I'm stupid sometimes. Perhaps more often than I'd like to admit.

I only post this picture again in the hopes that I can look back on the past year and reflect on all that I have learned, which is a lot. I have a very long way to go to be able to create the paintings that I can see so perfectly clearly in my head. But I find it encouraging and energizing to think that I have progressed from that first painting to some of what I have been working on recently.

It's a journey, and I am enjoying it.

Across The River, In Process

To any family or close friends that have been to our family's summer house on the Sassafras River, the general theme of this should be familiar.

In order to fit it onto a standard ratio rectangular canvas (11 by 14 in this case) and not a long flat panorama canvas (11 by 22 or similar), I have had to squeeze this into a view more compressed than exists in reality. The old Decker farm (of Black and Decker fame) would be farther off to the left, and the house on the bluff at right would be further off to the right, with the intermediate trees-and-bluff section being much broader.

So, it's a rough representation, and done from memory. It seems my digital picture library is mostly devoid of pictures from the River, and I am too lazy to dig out the big box of actual printed pictures that is in the basement somewhere. I hope.

Anyway, this is a simple Stage 1 of an "Across The River" painting. There are many rivers in the world, but to us there is only one The River. Basic color blocking is in place, with details to follow.

Across the River (oils, 11 by 14 canvas panel, in process)

This took an hour. Which I only mention because I am consciously making the effort to paint quickly and not fuss over the details...

Stage 2 will require finishing the clouds, detailing the grassy areas to make them less monochrome, highlighting of the foreground wooded sections to saturate the greens and make them pop, cleaning up the few buildings, and maybe highlighting the waves in the foreground to get them closer to that Sassafras brownish-green color. 

At the end it will need a red channel marker buoy somewhere in the middle...

Two Finished Paintings

After a few minor touchups I would now consider these done. I'm happy with both of them, and photographing them in natural daylight helps immensely.

Once the painting had dried, I went back and tidied up the smaller bluff on the left, and added proper hints of trees high on the large bluff to better match the original picture, and to break up the longer horizontal lines. 

Near Scottsbluff (oils, 11 by 14 panel)

The bottom of the next one didn't look right, so I scrubbed out some of the mass of bushes and vegetation along the bottom edge and added grassy areas instead. Lastly, the building needed to lose a window and have its roof angled to better seem to be pointing toward the water.

Across a River (oils, 12 by 16 panel)

I still have a very long way to go to be able to better execute what I am trying to paint, but I feel like my eye is getting better, as far as being able to critique my own work goes. For a good part of my first year of painting (which is coming up in a few days, I think), I could look at one my paintings and know that it didn't look right. Now I can usually tell specifically what doesn't look right, and why. 

Crossing the Rubicon

If you have an issue with a work that is going to bother you, make the bold choice. Cross the Rubicon and leave yourself no other option than to fix it.

As I wrote in the prior blog post, the painting I wasn't satisfied with was sitting on my improvised table easel a mere 20 feet from where I sat.

So after some repeated tweaking of the wording on the prior post, I wandered into the dining room (a pandemic-never-used-room that now serves as my main painting studio), and scratched out the parts of the painting that I said I couldn't really live with, and I sketched in an under-painting to replace what I didn't like.

This doesn't commit me to being satisfied with the new sketches, but it does commit me to not settling for what I knew didn't look or feel right.

So here is what I will be working from to try to finish this work:

Phase 5 - Fix the Foreground...

For better or worse, I have a few thoughts on what to do with the foreground.

Whatever the end result, the thought process was sound.

Postscript - I'm not sure I'm going to touch this again. It may be one of my favorites of anything I have done since I started painting a year ago...

Across a River

My next effort in oils is an impressionist landscape of a view across a river. It is loosely based on a work by Alfred Sisley (Riverbank near Saint-Mammes, 1884), but is also inspired by my 1985 trip to Europe and the vineyards on the banks of the Rhine. It is on a very cheap Daler and Rowney 12" by 16" canvas panel, using mainly Charvin Fine Oils and a few Gamblin colors mixed in (all "student grade" paints). I'm using a variety of brushes, mainly cheaper brushes from Michael's and/or Jerry's Artarama. I am also using Chelsea Classical Studio's "Lean" and "Fat" mediums to thin my paint and make them flow better. Lean mediums are for first layers and fat mediums are for final layers.

As I have probably said before, I like many styles of painting and often find myself imitating whatever I have seen last. Which, I guess, I don't apologize for. Some of these efforts are better than others, some of them are more satisfying than others, and all of them probably get me closer to developing my own style of painting. It's a journey, not a destination.

Anyway, the plan for this painting was to sketch out the composition, and then paint it from top to bottom. Each stage would be a background layer of base color followed by a more detailed overlay.

The first picture below is a thin sketch in burnt sienna, followed by a Royal Blue layer in the sky. I then went over the base sky with various darkened and lightened brush strokes using French Blue and Titanium White. The distant hills were then roughed in with a variety of grays and blues (Payne's Gray, Volcano Gray, etc). At this early stage, the top two "bands" of the painting are basically done, while the lower half hasn't even been started.

Early - Sketch and Sky and Distant Mountains

The next picture (taken without an intermediate step or two), has the far bank of the river roughed in with pale earth tones, and then "detailed" with a variety of darker and lighter brush strokes, trying not to stray too far in tone (saturation) or value (light/dark) from the base layer. Since this is in the distance, I don't want any of the colors to be overly saturated. The one intentional deviation from this is the darker pops of color representing trees and clumps of bushes as well as the brighter whites and reds hinting at a village on the right edge of the painting.

Also in this stage (of picture taking, at least), I have roughed in the colors of the river and near shore. I use these rough-ins as a base over which to scatter lighter and darker brush strokes, hoping to achieve that "impressionist" effect, and bring in the hints of other colors that I see (or imagine).

I always need to keep reminding myself that oil painting, or most painting I suppose, is about layers. Build the painting up...

Middle - Far Bank, River and Near Shore

The third picture shows the darkening and detailing of the river itself, as well as the detailing of the near bank. A wooden building has been blocked in. The far bank of the river has been cleaned up and highlighted better so it stands out a little more.

Late Middle - River Detail, Near Bank Detail

At this point, I was happy enough with the painting, but had a few issues as I got near the end.

The river (as represented in the prior picture) was blended near both banks, but was made up of choppy highlight brush strokes in the middle. I toned down the middle, roughed up the edges a bit, and generally tried to even out the brush stroke effect. This was successful, I think. The trees on the far bank needed some cleaning up. And the building on the near shore needed a bit of detail, but not too much.

End - Close to Finished (maybe?)

All of which brings this painting to the "almost done" stage.

Studying this last picture and the painting itself is an interesting exercise. The painting is much more vibrant and alive in person, which I attribute to taking most of my pictures inside at night in artificial light.

So... it's time for an honest critique of the work, given that it is not "done done" and can still be tweaked...

The near-bank shoreline is weird and bothers me in places. Between pictures 3 and 4 I already tried to bring the right side of the near shoreline down, and brought it below the roofline of the cabin. This was partly successful but needed to go further: the little "bump" of shoreline just left of the building needs to come down to a cleaner line.

Similarly, the point of land at lower left seems odd to me. This needs to be cleaned up, since it looks like a little cliff hanging over the water. It was supposed to be a sand bar. This needs to be smoothed out. I will probably end up bringing the whole near-side bank down and straightening it out, eliminating the turnback that I am not satisfied with.

With some work left to do, I like this one quite a bit. So does Amp, and so does my sister-in-law. That's worth something. A lot, actually.

As far as effort goes, I started this yesterday (Sunday) and put a total of about 60-90 minutes into it, getting to somewhere between pictures 1 and 2 (basically, picture 2 but with nothing below the far bank of the river done at all). I put another 60 minutes or so into it this evening, for a total thus far of about 2.5 hours. I always find it difficult to quantify how much time I have actually invested in a painting, since I seem to do most of my painting in 10-15 minute bursts. That being said, I'm happy with what I have gotten out of this time...

Final comment... I can't stress enough how freeing it has been to start painting with large tubes of good quality but reasonably priced paints, and good quality but ridiculously low priced canvas panels. It's a simple thing that has gotten me over the fear of wasting more expensive paints on a more expensive surface. Squeeze out big blobs of paint and let it fly. What's the worst that can happen.......

Sunset Over Water

I love water. Painting it scares me and I am not very good at it yet. So I might as well practice.

In about 45 minutes tonight, I painted this in oils on an 8" by 10" canvas panel. Colors were a very limited palette. Charvin colors used were French Blue (the dark), Royal Blue (the light), Titanium White, Volcano Gray, French Red Deep and Medium French Yellow. I also used a tiny bit of Gamblin's Alizarin Crimson and lots of Payne's Gray.

Sunset Over Water, 8 by 10, in oils

As with virtually everything that I do, there are parts of it that I like and parts of it that I don't.  

There are a few things I know I will touch up when the paint has dried somewhat, specifically cleaning, brightening and concentrating the sun's vanishing point. Painting wet on wet with white and yellow onto blues and darker colors will give you green mud, and I needed to force myself to put down the brushes before I did too much of this. Look closely and you will see that I did just a little of this...and then had the good sense to stop.

When I come back to it I will also be able to add some brighter foreground wave highlights. From the viewer's perspective, the brighter highlights should be in a triangle with a vanishing point directly in front of the sun's location - everything off to the sides of that should fade away. As of now, the foreground wave highlights are off-centered to the right, and from a physics standpoint this makes no sense. If you drew a line from the sun's brightest point directly toward the viewer (the front), that's where the brightest bits should be. And I will also darken the left side of the land mass (it's OK that the right and top edge is lighted but the bulk of the lower and left side would fade into deep shadow). And the sky around the land mass is a little weird.

Which I guess brings me to a final point. There is something to be said for creating a painting up to a certain stage, and then stepping back (literally and figuratively) and critiquing your own work. My typical painting experience, and this one followed that pattern exactly is: (1) paint the painting. (2) step back and tell myself "that's awful". (3) Come back and look at the painting again, even just 20 or 30 minutes later and say "that's kinda OK after all." (4) Then I take a picture for posting here and try to critique the work objectively. I think that other than the part where I am overly hard on myself, that's probably a good progression to work through. In other words, I guess I should only do steps #1 and #4 - paint and then objectively critique.

On a positive note, I do think I have a pretty good eye for critiquing my own work. Which gives hope for the future. I know what I am striving for; I just need to figure out how to get there.

At the moment I set down my brushes on this one, Grace walked into the dining room (where I paint), looked at it, and said "that's pretty Dad, I like it." I responded with something along the lines of "meh...it's pretty terrible." She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and as she left the room, said "you're way too hard on yourself - I think it's nice."

She's right and I'm wrong. I've been painting for a little less than a year. It's not a masterpiece. But it's nice.

And maybe next time I'll do just a tiny bit better. That's the hope anyway.

Idiopathic Epilepsy

...or, what the vet thinks Ryder has.

On October 2 of last year, Ryder had what looked like a seizure of some sort. It was terrifying, with us never having seen anything like it. At that point, Ryder would have been about 4.5 years old.

Amp and I were in the kitchen, and we heard a loud thump from the direction of the family room. We looked over and saw Ryder getting back to his feet from a prone position. We chuckled and thought he must have wiped out coming down the nearby stairs too fast.

Then we noticed he was shaking bit. We thought he scared himself. Then we saw that he was having trouble standing, and he looked like he was going to fall over walking toward us.

Sleeping baby

We went to him, and Grace came running. She sat next to him on the floor and held him, and told us that he was going to fall down if she didn't hold him up.

Amp scooped him up and sat on the couch with him, holding him and comforting him. He promptly threw up all over her lap. He was quivering and shaking, and I'm probably putting my feelings onto him, but he seemed scared.

The quivering and shaking was not severe, and only lasted 3 or 4 minutes before subsiding, but those few minutes seemed like an eternity. When he was done shaking he cuddled into Amp's lap (he's not normally a lap dog), and let her hold him for 15 or 20 minutes. He was as docile as we've ever seen him. At the end of the 15 or 20 minutes, he stood up, jumped off the couch, and trotted off toward the kitchen like nothing had ever happened.

Helping cook

While this was going on, I gave a panicky call to the vet, who said bring him over as soon as you can.

So we did.

They checked him with a thorough physical exam and a bunch of basic blood work. Everything came back fine. His heart and lungs sounded great. His reflexes were good. His lab work was perfect. If you didn't know what had just happened, he was acting and looking perfectly normal.

The vet's opinion, especially given that he was a middle-aged beagle, was idiopathic epilepsy. Her advice was to keep an eye on him, see if it happened again, and stay in touch.

On December 2 (two months to the day) he had an almost-identical episode. Brief. Not severe. Completely back to normal after 15 or 20 minutes of cuddling.

We didn't panic and reported in to the vet. She said one more of these and we should discuss next steps.

Christmas snacks!

This afternoon at about 3:00pm, almost exactly two months (again) from the last one, Ryder had his third almost-identical episode. I was on a work call, and Grace was a trooper. No panic. Scooped him up and sat on the couch and held him steady. Talked to him and soothed him. And it passed, almost exactly like the others had.

Amp got home from work shortly after, and we took him to the vet an hour later. All tests were the same as after the first episode; physically he was great. A preliminary diagnosis of Idiopathic Epilepsy was made. We discussed next steps (all virtual as they examined Ryder in the office and talked to us on the phone in the parking lot). The most reasonable next step is to put Ryder on a drug called Zonisamide, which is a "primary anti-convulsant". It is the best first choice, being well-tolerated with a minimum of side effects. One dose with the morning meal. One dose with the evening meal. Two doses every day. Which means that Ryder will now be taking more prescription medications that the rest of us combined. By a daily score of Ryder 2 versus everybody else zero.

The girls' first question, after "is he OK?", was "what are we going to do, Dad?"

I think they are worried about the cost of treatments, and whether that cost (or cost avoidance) would win out over Ryder...

We are going to do what the vet recommends, of course.

I never ever ever ever ever wanted a dog. I made that abundantly clear. But now we have a dog and I love him with all my heart. According to Lilo and Stitch, Ohana means family, and family means no-one left behind. So we do what we need to do and hope for the best.

If this doesn't work, we'll try the next thing. And the next. Until we run out of nexts.

Ryder is one of us now.

 

Custer State Park, South Dakota

Next up in my Dakota series of painting efforts will be something roughly based on the photo below. This scene is typical of the gently rolling grassland hills that dominate the southern part of the park.

Custer State Park, July 31, 2011

This scene doesn't make for the greatest painting composition, so after I painted a first effort at this, I sat back, looked at it, and knew something was missing. On the one hand, what I had done was a pretty faithful representation of the picture. But on the other hand, faithfully reproducing a photo doesn't always make for the best painting.

So I went back to the photos from the rest of this particular hike, and found this:

Custer State Park, flowers in the valley

To make a more interesting composition, I added some of these lavender and yellow flowers in the foreground. And added another clump of trees in the right mid-ground to balance the trees in the left distance. The new trees are only roughed in, and will require some additional work, as they are closer to the foreground and won't end up quite as...vague.

After the first batch of changes (bad lighting)

This might not be a faithful copy of the original photo, but it does capture the essence of this hike and the landscape of the park, and makes for a far more interesting painting composition. There is a lesson to be learned here...

Something still didn't seem quite right though, mainly in the lower left part of the composition. So I added the first rough-in of a clump of bushes running down the swale between the hills. Better I think.

Second batch of changes (better lighting)

The newer trees and bushes still need work, but it seems to be getting closer to a better painting.

That being said, I'm also reaching the point where I need to wrap this up and move on to the next one...

Finishing up Scottsbluff

In the interests of moving on to the next painting, I think this will be the end of this one (cough cough).

Near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, July 2011

The bluff on the right still needs some work, so when this dries I will probably not be able to resist the temptation to revisit it, but who knows... Yeah, OK, I know. I look at the geologic stratification lines and they are too regular, so something will need to be done to break them up a little. But that is a story for another day.

In the meantime, at least the picture is taken with a good color balance, and is a good representation of what the painting actually looks like.

As for what comes next, I have been going through the hundreds of pictures taken on the Dakotas trip in 2011, and the number of these good quality pictures that could be turned into a sketch or painting is dozens at least. So be prepared to see some Dakotas paintings in the near future.

Scotts Bluff Nebraska

About a half a lifetime ago, back in 2011, the boys went on a camping trip to the Dakotas, and it was the best outdoorsy experience of my life. As I work on my painting, it seems only reasonable to go back through the hundreds of pictures I took during that trip (and others) and attempt to paint some of those scenes...

Near Scotts Bluff Nebraska

After flying into Denver, we drove through the southeast corner of Wyoming (Cheyenne) and then into western Nebraska before heading north into the Black Hills of South Dakota and then on into North Dakota (Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Unit to be specific). The views around Scotts Bluff were amazing...

Armed with a bunch of large tubes of Charvin oil paints and a host of dirt-cheap canvas panels from Walmart (Daler Rowney and Royal & Langnickel brands), I've committed to getting over my fear of starting a painting. Maybe. Anyway, here's a rough sketch in thinned burnt sienna of the picture from July 30, 2011...

A rough sketch

... and the first layer of an oil painting sketch. The point of this exercise is to paint something quickly. Paint what you see. This was done in about 30 minutes. When it has tacked up in a few days, I will go back and clean it up. This will be primarily focused on the large bluff to the right, which is a hot mess at this point. But fixable. I'll also be adjusting the green tones of the grasslands. There are supposed to be brighter green highlights but everything is a little too olivey-brown. Part of this is the lighting for the picture - the colors are more vibrant on the canvas than they are in the photo.

Near Scotts Bluff Nebraska, 11" by 14"

I'm looking for a representation, not an exact duplication. This is something that is easy to get hung up on as a beginning artist. I don't need to copy the photograph (why would I...I already have the photograph). Evocative. Not a photocopy in paint.

Anyway, it's a Saturday. I did the thing - I made a painting. Tomorrow's another day...

Times Change, and the Society of Ancients

When I started this blog in September of 2009, approximately 944 posts and eleven and a half years ago, I couldn't have imagined how much my life, and my focus, would change. The intent of the blog at the start was to be updates on my hobby of historical miniatures wargaming (toy soldiers for adults). Painting figures. Fighting tabletop battles. Collecting figures. Conventions. Making terrain pieces.

That was more or less true for a while, off and on for the better part of at least half a decade, interspersed with bits of whatever else was going on in my life.

Inevitably, the blog would ride the tides of my current areas of interest for a certain period of time. It's fascinating to take some time and go back through what the majority of the posts have been for blocks of time over the years.

Sometimes, beauty is right outside your front door...

Historical miniatures. Literature. Hiking. Geocaching. Music. Sentimental trips down memory lane. Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy roleplaying games. Writing. Art. YouTube inspired re-visits to every concert I was ever privileged to attend in my (mostly) younger days. Family. My kids. Philosophical nonsense ramblings. Learning to paint and draw (art). Political rants. More family stuff. Dog pictures.

Whose chair is this, anyway?...

This rambling journey was brought sharply into focus when the editor of Slingshot, the publication of the esteemed Society of Ancients, a wargaming society in England, contacted me to ask if some pictures from my blog could be used in their publication. Of course I said "of course". And they used some pictures in their most recent issue, and credited me, which was a great honor. Part of our gentleman's agreement was that they would include a link to my blog on their website. Which got me to thinking. My blog hasn't really been primarily about miniatures gaming in quite some time. Recently, my blog has included political rants that some might find...shall we say, off-putting. So I let the SoA folks know that they could scrap the link to my blog if they wanted, for that reason, which I think they did.

I'm proud of my political views and stand by them. Somewhere down the road I would like to think my kids will reflect on my liberal political and social views and respect me for them. I also recognize that this is a completely different thing than someone wanting to go to a blog and find miniatures wargaming content and get something different entirely. So, to the Society of Ancients and specifically the editor of Slingshot, thank you for using my pictures. It is an honor. You are a gentleman, and I thank you.

As for the rest of my blog...it is what it is. In 2009 it was intended to be an outlet for my miniatures wargaming hobby. The pictures used by Slingshot were mostly from 2014. In the ensuing 11+ years since the blog's inception it has proven to be an outlet for that and so much more.

Someday I may even post more wargaming content.

Fear of Failure

There is something that has become very clear to me as I continue on my learn-to-paint journey. I have a significant fear of failure. I work hard at my day job all day every day. And then I think about a painting that I would like to create in the evening or over the weekend. And more often than not, I am sad to say, that is as far as it goes.

I think. I plan. I think some more. And then I often do something other than picking up a paint brush and getting started. Maybe I should just watch a Flyers hockey game instead...

Why? The answer to that one is pretty easy. I expect that I will attempt a painting and not like the result. It is far easier to go to the Jerry's Artarama store in Newark Delaware, or even the local Michael's store, browse the art supplies, buy some stuff I don't need (because I already have more art supplies than I can use) and consider myself a fledgling artist, than it is to actually try to make some art.

Which is odd, in that many of the paintings I have actually completed have been OK, and I am able to look at them through the lens of someone who is a beginner at all this, and be happy at what I have done. Some of them I like a lot.

All of which I find strangely fascinating. I would consider myself to be relatively bright and relatively self-aware, and yet despite how easy it is to stand back and objectively recognize all of this, I am finding it hard to break the cycle of self-doubt.

Anyway, they say that the first step towards solving a problem is to admit that you have a problem. So, yeah, I have an actually-doing-the-thing-rather-than-just-thinking-about-doing-the-thing problem.

I'd like to work on a painting or two this weekend. I have a bunch of thoughts in my head.

Let's see what happens...

Inauguration Day

Today was quite a day in America. Some of the same. Some very different. Some odd. And some strangely normal. Strangely normal is refreshing these days.

On the one hand, an old white guy was sworn in as the 46th President of these United States. So...same old same old. 43 old white guys. Then a young black guy. Then an old white clown. And now another old white guy. Not much difference there.

On the other hand, after a never-ending string of old white guys as the Vice President, today we watched a Vice President-elect take the oath of office...and it wasn't the same old same old. It was a young, part Black, part south Asian woman.

It's certainly too early to call it a trend, but for over 200 years we had a monotonous string of the same thing. And within the last 5 years, we have had people of color, and a female, in the highest offices in the land. So, it's a start. I'm not saying that every high office should be held by a woman or person of color, but it would be nice if things moving forward better reflected what America looks like. More than 50% of us are women. Something along the lines of a third of us aren't white. And I say this as an aging white guy......every politician shouldn't look like me. Because when I look around, at work, in my neighborhood, in my kids' schools, and in the community at large...not everyone looks like me. And that's a good thing. A great thing. Our representative democracy should look like that too. When the few rule over the great many, it's not a good thing. It's not right, and from a practical standpoint, it's not sustainable. Revolutions are born out of that kind of imbalance.

It's also nice to think that there are little girls and little kids of color who are growing up in an America where there have always been minorities and women in the White House. That has never happened before. Not for my kids, and certainly not for me.

Some things are odd. An inaugural ceremony with very few people present. A parade to the White House with lots of military and police but almost no spectators.

And then there are some strangely normal things. Strangely normal things that seem odd but shouldn't. A daily White House press briefing that (A) actually happened, and (B) gave truthful information and answered questions openly and honestly, even if the answer was "I don't know (or can't say) but we'll get back to you". There are times when different is good, and there are times like this when a return to normalcy is what is needed. We need this.

As I write this, I have been wandering in an out of my home office, watching bits and pieces of the inaugural concert that is being shown on all the networks. So a few random thoughts... Lin-Manuel Miranda is a national treasure. There are performers out there that you (or I) may not know, but should. Kamala Harris is impressive. Young girls and kids of color look like they have another role model to look up to. Most importantly, we need to believe in hope, and a better future. It might be difficult to achieve, but striving for anything less is...why bother.

There is also the recognition that as good as today feels, there is a lot of hard work ahead. Digging out of a huge hole that somebody else dug is hard work. But necessary.

As Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama just said on TV, the Biden administration's success is our success, so we work together for the greater good. I hope.

As a registered Republican but clearly a Democrat, I can say that when I look back at all of the modern-era former presidents (living or not), I can view all of them as good men regardless of their political affiliations and ideology. Carter was a largely ineffective president (much of this due to circumstances), but an absolutely wonderful human being. Bush the elder was a good man, a decorated veteran, and a patriot. Clinton might have been the brightest of the bunch, but had his flaws that undermined his successes. Bush the younger I generally strongly disagreed with while in office, but when viewed in his later years (without the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld distorting my view), has consistently stood on the side of that which is right and good regardless of political party. Removing the politics, he is unquestionably a good man, and has earned my respect. I liked Obama a lot (being a liberal Democrat and all that). You can disagree on political ideology and yet recognize that each legitimately believed they were doing the right thing, and respect them for that. You win the election, you call the shots for a while. That's how it works.

Conspicuously absent today was the former grifter-in-chief. Which was good. There isn't enough time that will pass or a large enough bottle of wine to ever make the last four years right.

To Presidents Carter, Bush the elder (posthumously), Clinton, Bush the younger, and Obama: thank you for your service.

To President Biden: good luck, you're gonna need it.

To Americans everywhere: Keep the faith. It's gonna get better.

It's a New Year...

...and yet in many ways, it still feels like the old year.

We mainly stay at home. We worry about the future. We wish things were different. Lots of things. Grace's remaining year and a half in high school. Julia's venturing out into the wide world. Not getting sick and dying. So for these days, pretty much the usual.

On the plus side, despite the very significant challenges we are facing, our federal government will soon be led by an adult, and not...whatever it is we have had for the past four years. Misogynistic, narcissistic, psychopathic, racist, fascist, incompetent grifter. But I digress...

Amp has gotten her first dose of the Moderna vaccine as a frontline healthcare worker. Grace may be able to get vaccinated soon as a part time worker in a retirement community (one of the vaccines is age 16 and up). We believe in vaccines. We don't believe that the vaccines will give the government the ability to mind-control us. They already have super-duper super-top-secret military satellites for that...

In the meantime, I work. Lots of extra hours, which is the down side of a semi-permanent work at home arrangement. My office is now never more than about 50 feet from anywhere in the house...

I'm painting some. I'll share more on my recent attempts soon, but in the meantime, I ordered some frames from Jerry's Artarama and had Amp pick the paintings she wanted to use the frames on.

So we have three small 8 by 10 paintings in the entry hall near the front door (two acrylics and one oil), and one 16 by 20 in the basement.

Three 8 by 10's

They look nice framed, and it feels kinda nice to have something I created hanging on the walls of my home.

A 16 by 20

If nothing else, it gives me some motivation to try to create something better...

Stay safe, and be well.

Life's Been Good

There is a lot of tragedy and suffering in the world these days, and that is good cause to reflect on how fortunate I am, and have been. And with luck, maybe, will continue to be...

Small reminders seem to be popping up frequently these last few days.

A Christmas present T-shirt from the Life is Good brand... [A perfect gift I might addd - this is Ryder in a nutshell...]

An offhand comment from the kids: "we're lucky, this was a good Christmas".

And YouTube teeing up an Eagles song while I sit here at my desk doodling on some Dungeons and Dragons maps in the hopes that me and my friends will get to play again some day in the not too distant future. The Eagles song? Life's Been Good, of course.

That's very true. Life has indeed been good. I'd like to think that I am appreciative enough of my good fortune on a daily basis that I don't need the reminder, but if there is some higher power out there emphasizing the point, then thanks. Things haven't always been perfect. Or easy. I've succeeded at some things and failed at others. There have been challenges, and will continue to be.

But all in all, I would agree with Joe Walsh. Life's been good to me so far.

Simple Little Landscape

I hope you are all well in this holiday season.

Rolling Hills

In the absence of a real post...here's a simple little 11 inch by 14 inch impressionistic landscape in oils (Lukas 1862 oil paints for the most part, with a Gamblin black mixed in).

Stay safe. Stay home. Be well. Better times are ahead.

Hunger... and Christmas

2020 is not a normal year. Understatement. But it has served to highlight problems that have existed for a very long time in America. We are the richest nation on Earth. And we have hungry people. Lots of hungry people. That makes no sense. This year moreso than ever.

Christmas is a time for celebration, for family, and for gift giving.

This year, we think we will do something a little different.

For background, my mom, my children's grandmother, has always been very generous with regards to Christmas. She gives us money every year with which to buy gifts for ourselves and the children (since she can't get out to do the shopping herself). We have always been very grateful for what she has given us. It's not an insignificant gift in total.

At dinner tonight, we told the kids what we would like to do. We explained how their grandmother has given us money for their gifts. We proposed that we would prefer to take Grandmom's money, and a bunch of our own, and find an assortment of good local causes to donate to. This would of course mean less gifts for them...

They loved the idea, and in the intervening few hours, have provided a number of options for us to consider. So this is what we will do... Support local food banks. Local shelters. Local causes that support the greater good.

I couldn't be more proud that we basically said "we want to take money for your gifts and give it to total strangers in need", and the kids' immediate response was "YYYEESSSSS!!!!!...How much can we give?"

Maybe we have raised these kids right...

Another Win for Democracy

Another day, another bunch of Tr#$%/Republican lawsuits unceremoniously thrown out of court. For those of you keeping score at home, that is 1 for 51, give or take. [And the 1 was allowing observers to move from 10 feet away from ballot counting to within 6 feet of ballot counting...]

SCOTUS says F#$% off

This was a big one, though. This evening, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Orange Hit#$r's bid to turn the USA into an autocracy. In a ruling that only took a handful of words, the highest court in the land basically said "go away and don't come back." And this is a Court that is 6-3 conservative, and has 3 members installed by Tr#$%.

America remains a place where democracy is in significant danger these days, but at least we live to fight another day.