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Today I was very busy so didn't get to my daily painting until early evening.  The wisteria are blooming all over the front of the house, so I took my watercolors out onto the porch and painted a cluster of blossoms.  

Today was sunny and mild so I went outside and did a couple of quick watercolor studies.  One was of my herb garden; the other was of a scene on a nearby patio.  I think the patio works better because I resisted the temptation to clutter it up with detail.  

It wasn't raining today, so I went outside and did a landscape for today's daily painting.  Unfortunately, there aren't very many good views in my yard--something that has prevented me from doing a lot of quick landscapes.  So I set up the easel in the driveway and focused on a view across the street.  Working outdoors is full of surprises.  The wind blew over my easel, with the paper face down on the pavement, knocking off most of the pastel!  A neighbor stopped by to look, which turned into a conversation.  The workmen next door began backing their truck toward me, so I had to move everything away and then move it all back.  In spite of this, I managed to get something that sort of resembles a landscape painting.  The hardest thing for me is to impose some sort of composition on the chaos of the world.  My natural inclination is to just plunge in mindlessly and paint whatever's there.  Must try to think about the golden ratio more!  Once again, the painting is in pastel on paper treated with acrylic pastel ground and light blue paint.

Here's another pastel "painting,"  this time a still life of onions.  It took 20-30 minutes. Again, the paper had a coating of acrylic pastel ground and some purple and black blotches.  This dark, purple background made a good contrast with the orange/brown subject and the yellow cloth.

This self-portrait is in pastel...but some people consider pastel a painting medium, even though it is dry, not wet.  So I'm treating it as my daily painting for today.  The paper has  acrylic pastel ground and random color blotches (from several years ago).  The studio lamp cast a warm glow from the left, while the open door let in a cooler, bluish light from the right.  It turned out way better than yesterday's landscape.

Yesterday's drawing class featured Barbara as our model.  She has a fascinating face, with a lot of interesting contours and wrinkles.  I've drawn her countless times and still enjoy the challenge of achieving her likeness.  My favorite drawing of her from yesterday is the one with the flowers.  We also drew a few gestures of Ilona before Barbara arrived.  A couple of these are here also.

The artist Mary Gilkerson (marygilkerson.com) has a Pinterest posting about starting a daily painting practice.  She says that it's better to do a quick, 20-30 minute painting every day than to lavish hours over a painting every now and then.  She says that daily painting improves skill, fluency, and judgement.  It also helps a personal painting style develop--all without consciously trying for any of these benefits.  This sounds so good, I have decided to do it.  So today I salvaged an old canvas board and re-used it to paint an outdoor view in my back yard.  I spent about 20 minutes, and the painting is absolutely awful--so bad I'm not going to post it here. But if Gilkerson is right, the next one should be a little less awful.  And if I keep going, eventually they will start looking halfway decent.  That would be a very welcome development.  The sign that it's working will be if the paintings start showing up on my blog.  We'll see. 

Yesterday's drawing session featured Bob as our model. He seemed farther away than usual, and I wasn't feeling it, so my drawings came out only so-so.  But one of the other students did buy one ("Bob, Knees Up").  That always feels good.  I used charcoal on white paper for most of the drawings, with one on buff-colored paper.