The fireweed are blooming,  here they are seen from near my neighbor Aimee's house looking across the Salmon River towards the beach and Pleasant Island.  Hot and sunshine today, though the sky is hazy.

Yesterday, I set my tent up at the Saturday Market at Sunnyside and tried to sell some paintings.  Not a great success, but fun to talk to people and sketch and paint.  I left out a lot.... like people, vehicles and more chairs.

Our sun porch is a mass of color with wave petunias, tuberous begonias, nasturtiums, lobelia, clarkia and some plants I don't know the name of.  I painted this yesterday of some of the petunias using Daniel Smith brand Opera.

This was done on Wednesday..... Cottonwood and fireweed that haven't bloomed yet.  I drew it with a pen on Niddigen paper.

Unable to post my yesterday's postcard  at home, and again today.  My ATT internet is always slow, but I couldn't even get my email today.  So now I'm at the library.

Yesterday morning, this was the view from my studio window... I didn't move much on this one.

 I painted with Kathy yesterday and did an oil of this same scene.  It was not a keeper.  I went back this morning.  This is looking up the river from Kathy and Cheryl's house.

The Last Five Days

Its the fifteenth day of the month and I have done 15 postcards.  And I've managed to finish two oil paintings and start another this week  Now I'm going to catch up with my posting and try my best to post daily this coming week, plus do about 10 other things on my list.

This was Wednesday's painting.... trying to paint flowers faster without a good pencil drawing first.  I ended up with no room for the jar.

On Thursday, I tried again, drawing with a fine point red Micron pen.  I drew the jar with an aqua blood bleeding pen, but it was in line with the flowers, so out came the black gouache and I cropped the bottom.

A friend brought a bag of cherries by on Thursday, some that a guest had brought her.   It was hard not to eat them all before painting them. 

Yesterday was busy and I was able to do these pretty quickly.  I about had them memorized.

Today we were finally getting some serious rain.  I painted this about noon; I moved a lot of trees.  Later this afternoon, a black bear and her two cubs were here. First the cubs climbed one of our mountain ash trees and ate berries while their mom scratched her back on the tree.  Then the three went out to the strawberry patch (just to the left of this scene), and spent an hour or so. 

More from the Beardsleys

4x6 inches

 This was started on my kayak/camping trip before the 4th.  I pulled it out of the garbage and finished it. The drawing is off, but the rest is as I remember, more so than the second one that I did from a photo.

4x6 inches

Blue Poppy

8x3.5

I intended to paint a quick sketch, but ended up spending about 2 hours on this.  Wish I'd left the seed pod off the top.

House with Pink Lupine

about 5x5 inches

 The pink flowers in front of the house are lupine.  They are an introduced species, not like the native lavender ones.  Dying pines behind the house 

Beardsley Islands

4x6

  I left Bartlett Cove in my kayak on last Sunday with two friends, Bonnie and Carolyn, where we camped two nights on two different unnamed islands.
We left Bartlett Cove about 4 PM, paddled through "the cut" and landed on a small island  near the west end of Link Island. This is the view looking west at about 9 PM on Sunday night.  There were humpbacks beyond the first islands.

5x7

Here I was on the rocky beach looking east on Monday morning,

4x6

and here, looking more or less northwesterly.

4x6

We paddled North on Monday afternoon to our second campsite on another unnamed island.
This is Carolyn resting and reading that evening,

4x6.5

This is the view across the bay, Mt Crillion and Bertha in the distance, waiting for the sun to go down.  This is the second attempt, done at home, as the one done that night was way off.  This one isn't much better.

5x7

and Tuesday morning I drew these in ink as the wind was blowing them around.  I painted them after getting home.

4.5x4

Yesterday, I painted this from a photo that I took Tuesday morning of another island. 

Rink Creek

4x6 inches

We drove out to our friend Don's place in Rink Creek last week.  We didn't stay long, but I took some photos from which I painted this.

I only did 25 postcards in June and vowing now to do one everyday this month.  I'll be leaving in my kayak this afternoon for two night camping in the Beardsley Islands and am looking forward to a different land/waterscape.

Evening View

about 4x6 inches

3.3x5.6 inches

 I painted these last Sunday night looking south from my kitchen window between 8 and 9 o'clock.  The second one is just the very tops of the spruce, lit by the setting sun.

My Little Gallery

5x7

 I've opened my little gallery a few days last week. Hardly anyone came by.  I sketched  and started painting this on Friday and finished it on Saturday.

5.4x3.5 inches

 The gallery is surrounded by wild Nookta roses which I painted on Friday.

Some Flowers

Many of the wild flowers are at their peak, and also in the garden.

6x4 inches

This is an icelandic poppy from my garden.  I love the color.

6x4 inches

I drew this in pencil while waiting for someone at the beach.  I only got started painting it there and finished at home from memory. The Lupine are especially beautiful this year and there are some white ones at the beach.

about 3x4.5

 Earlier this week I helped to show a botanist  from Juneau studying orchids where some Lady's Slippers are growing. This is one of the three found here... Cypripedium passerinum. There are several of these on the upland beach.  I painted these yesterday morning and finished at home. It was hard to get down to their level, and I missed the details. I was really tempted to pick one, but I am one of the biggest complainers of other folks damaging the plants, so held myself back.

This one is at the beach too... , Cypripedium calceolus Subsp. parviflorum.  He said there is only one other of these recorded in SE Alaska.  We also visited a Cypripedium montanum in an area that is sadly infested with European Black Slugs and is showing damage from them.  

Monday and Tuesday Postcards

I got on line today (Friday)  to put some new postcards on and see that this never got posted.  I've really had a hard time with the internet and phone lately..... too many tourists using it here, I guess.  I tether from my phone to get on line and quite often there is no signal.  I can usually go to the library and connect there.

I seem to have a good signal now, so here goes and I'll wait until tomorrow to post the new ones.

4x6

I biked to the beach Monday evening. I found a place below my favorite trees to paint, away from the campers (4 tents) and loud partiers .  The lupine are in full bloom and here is some rare white ones east of the road.

6x4

This is a foot bridge across the ditch between our house and neighbors.   Ditches were dug here to drain the much lower land during WWII when an airstrip was built to refuel jets.  It has been dry and there is no water in it now, but usually fills up to below the plank in the fall.  I sat on the berm above and painted this Tuesday afternoon.

Couple of Trees

I finally opened my little gallery today for four hours and nobody came, which is rather disappointing.  I rearranged things and got most everything labeled which is a good thing.  I don't remember having it so full before.

about 5x4 inches

Its a rainy day and I painted a spruce from the window in my neighbor yard  which is across from the gallery.  The new grown on the spruce define the boughs this time of year and I was trying to depict with not much success.

about 5x5 inches

This is one of the mountain ashes in our yard that I painted a couple of evenings ago from the living room.  It is in flower now, but not obvious in my painting.

Afternoon at the Beach

After spending the morning making 20 jars of jam with last years strawberries and raspberries  plus habanera peppers that I bought in Juneau on my way from Seattle,  I drove to the beach to see the flowers and paint.  The lupines are beautiful and there are some white ones among the lavender ones.... very unusual. 

about4x3 inches

There are 13 blooms on the yellow lady slipper and about 3 more that might open.  I've worried for years that ATVs and cycles would run over it, but now two spruce are quite close and may overtake it. I started painting it, but the wind came up and I was just too cold to do much.  I painted a little bit more from the photo when I got home.

5x7

I painted my favorite two trees again from my car.  Other trees are becoming more apparent.  The pine tree, just as the ones in my yard is becoming more and more brown, though it didn't appear so from my vantage point.

Dying Shore Pine

The shore pine South of the house has been slowly dying from a fungal disease that is endemic here.  It is definitely more brown than it was last year.

Back from Seattle

4x6

 I came back from a four day trip to Seattle last night.  I took my paints but, shamefully, didn't paint a thing.  But I do have these that I'd done last week.  I'd put the images in a couple of posts which I never posted and couldn't seem to finish from my ipad.  So now, here those are in a new post.
I painted this of the Good River with Ellie and Chris again near Ellie's house on the 5th.

6x4

4x4

 These were of the only tulip that wasn't fading last week.

Picking  spruce tips, the new growth that comes each year, has become a little cottage industry around here.  They are used by locals to make various concoctions and are bought by the pound, mostly by the Alaska Brewing Company which makes a popular spruce IPA,  with a "tart, berry-like bubblegum character."


                      

Unfortunately some of the easiest trees to get to are at our beach and look like this one.... I painted this a few years ago.

Now it is time to get out and paint!

Three More

7x3

 Rain all day yesterday.  These golden globe flowers are in full bloom in the garden.

4x6

 I painted this old dead willow on June 1 and went back into the woods on Sunday to finish it, but the light was all wrong.  I decided to leave it just as is and painted this spruce instead.  Lots of mosquitoes.

6x4

Lovely Day

5.5 x 2.7

 June is starting out with lovely warm weather.  I went on my bike towards the beach yesterday afternoon, but didn't make it all the way as the wind was making it so hard to pedal.  This is one of two postcards that I painted of the Chilkats. 

Five More Postcard for the Month of May

6.6x5

It has been really busy this week with two extra little people in the house.  I did this little gouache on Sunday.  

5x7

 And this from the edge of the wood behind our house on Monday, .... the wood shed again.

5x7

5x7

 I tried to paint at the beach on Tuesday evening, but didn't get very far.  I did these two from a sketch, looking towards North Pass.  The first one is mostly gouache.

5x7

Yesterday, I met with two friends, Chris and Ellie, to paint together at Chris's house along the Salmon River..... a beautiful day.