The Donna Kay is a shrimp boat that is stuck in the sand at Cape San Blas, Florida.  It apparently drifted here,  but when Hurricane Michael blew through the area, it pushed the boat further into the sand.  There have been attempts to get it out, but to no avail.  It is a tourist spot.   I have hiked with my family to the place where it sits now.

The north end of Cape San Blas in Florida can only be reached by boat.  There’s only a sparkling white beach.  With a dark cloudy sky the contrast is dramatic.  My granddaughter Natalie ties them both together.

I love doing portraits.  This is Ted May, a friend I’ve known my whole life.  I decided to have a beard growing contest for my high school classmates.  The prize for the winner would be a painted portrait of them with their beard.  He was the winner.

My daughter drove me from her home in Cologne, Germany to the Netherlands.  We visited the Van Gogh museum, then traveled to Leiden, the town my Mayflower ancestors lived in prior to their trip to America.

We enjoyed the town.  We walked all around it.  There’s a hill where a castle used to be.  We went to the top of it.  I was really intrigued by the view as we looked down.  I loved it!  Here’s my portrayal of what I saw that day.

I recently found a black and white photo my father had taken when he was in the army at the end of World War II.  It was a street scene in Bari, Italy.  I was intrigued by it. I wanted to paint it, but it wasn’t very clear and I had no idea what the colors were.  I matched their values and gave it my best guess.  It was done with pure emotion–I just squinted my eyes and let the brush paint away.

I’ve been stuck in my house for forty days because of COVID19.  To keep me from going crazy I decided to do a still-life.  I found some things in the house and set them up on a table.  I turned off the light in the room, then lit them with a lamp.  This is what I came up with.  It must have worked–I’ve kept my sanity.

This is a painting of a family hiking in the mountains.  I’ve used a technique called “atmospheric perspective.”  This gives the feeling of looking up at them as they hike.  The one on the far right is painted largest, the one in the middle is smaller than the first, and the last one is the smallest.  This makes the one to the right look closest while the one on the left feels further away.  I’ve also put the one on the right further down on the painting while I’ve painted the others higher up on the canvas.

A few years ago  my wife commented to me that Frida Kahlo and Rembrandt did an annual self-portrait.  She thought I should do the same, so here’s the eighth annual self-portrait.