Here are some portraits I did of my brother Jason’s family. They were kind enough to pose for me. Portraits are tricky, for both the artist and the model. The model has to pose for awhile {I said it would be an hour, but it took two). And it’s a crap shoot whether the artist’s interpretation will flatter the model’s idea of themselves or not. And for the artist….capturing likenesses can be tricky. Even if you do get the likeness, is the painting any good? Does it have spirit and panache?

Panache is important to me. In fact, a portrait with panache is really what I am looking for over likeness. Most people judge portraits by likeness, but we have cameras for that. We have artists for panache.

Avery - The Ruler of Elves

The great thing about doing a portrait of someone is that you get one on one time with them. It was a delight to hang with my niece Avery and talk about world politics, and generational issues and writing, and her name, which translates: Ruler of Elves. After I finished the portrait I mentioned that I thought it looked like Joan of Arc, and she said that Joan of Arc was one of her heros. Success!

Tricky Nici

This was my second attempt painting my sister in law Nici, and I did it from a photo (surrender). Still, it has a nice warm feeling. I liked the first one that I did at our live sitting (below) but it was all panache and not much likeness.

Caleb the Stoic

My nephew Caleb was the first to volunteer, and was quite a trooper, because he was feeling under the weather (we later found out he had strep throat!). But this captures him. I like the quasi-anime feel, the mood, the sharpness of shape and stroke, while at the same time communicating a softness. He’s thinking of starting to model (fashion, etc). He’s got the look, and fantastic hair!

It was so great being able to hang with my brother’s family. I was hoping to get to portraits of brother Jason and Franky (niece) and Parker (nephew) but beyond scheduling logistics there are lots of other reasons to not to want to have your portrait done.

It’s like getting a haircut that will never grow out, you gotta really trust the stylist.

Quick sketches enroute at the SeaTac AirPort

From imagination landscape done while looking at the back of a seat on the airplane.

With Mom and Catalpa tree in backyard (i watched the tree being planted when I was a young’un).

St. Louis is my hometown. More accurately, Kirkwood, a suburb in West County. I come to visit my Mom and sister Nicole and brother Jason and his family. The trees and clouds are softer here. And the cicadas are like little winged red-eyed zombies, wandering about confused after being in the ground for a decade.

Drawing mom as she watches TV

No long verbal diatribe will accompany this post, as we have to go to my sister Nicole’s housewarming. But….more to come, I’m sure!

Hello dear blog reader! I am starting another month-long trip; this time in the U.S., going to St. Louis, Baltimore, NYC and Maine to visit famiy and friends. I hope you can join me! My first post of this journey will be the completion of this mural that I started last Fall.

Over the winter I completed a mural called “DogFish Bay” in Bill Austin’s garage. Bill is a near 90 year old mover and shaker in Poulsbo, who likes to see creative projects getting done. This was done on 4’x8’ plywood panels and reassembled/installed on the Longship Marine Building. It measures 14’x 24’ total.

It’s a historically ambiguous scene, spanning a range from the 1890s to 1950s, including a Mosquito Fleet ferry on the right, Evening Star Purse Seiner center (still in service) and the small, yet elegantly crafted Poulsbo boats (lower left).

Below is a video that tells and shows more. If reading from email. you probably have to go to the blog to see the video.

More murals loom in the future! One on Bainbridge Island and possibly another 2 in Poulsbo! Zoiks! I better make hay this summer. Best! Steffon

With very litle lead time I was asked if I wanted to do a show at the Vashon Hardware Store Gallery, a wondeful space that I have already had 3 shows at.

Luckily, I have piled up enough watercolors from my trips to Mexico and Colombia over the past few years to amount to about 15 paintings.

Please join me at this First Friday’s Gallery Walk on Vashon Island for a show that celebrates the beauty of the land, people and cultures South of the Border. I’ll be there by 5:30pm!

A week is a short time to fly to another part of the world, get set up, do some things, do some art, then pack up and leave again. Tomorrow is my last day, so I felt compelled to do a beach painting today. I don’t spend that much time on the beach, but when I do, people sure are friendly. It’s like a big gringo family down here. They have a reverence for the place. People come down decade upon decade. It’s a little tribe of retirees, mostly in camping rigs or sprinter vans. They stay for months at a time, but most leave around this time: Semana Santa, a big holiday in Mexico. The beaches become completely packed with tents. I hear it is quite the week-long fiesta, but it definitely changes the tenor of an otherwise peaceful spot.

Here is the drawing in preparation for the watercolor:

I’ll admit….at first I was bored with the scene. Another beach, with boats, and waves and palm trees and distant mountain. it’s sounds like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m actually not. Despite my lack of inspiration, I went ahead anyway and started the drawing. The proportions were wrong; I had no room for the curve of the beach that I wanted to include, so i erased and started over.

And as the drawing proceeded into the painting, that thing started to happen, where the common scene you have labeled as such starts to come alive with interest. The act of having to assemble it means really having to look, and reconstruct what is there before you. Details and relationships that are usually passed over have to be understood. You ally yourself with what is before you, and it is happy to reveal it’s secrets, but also keeps changing constantly, which keeps you on your toes.

I am sure there at least a thousand decisions that need to be made with each watercolor done. Art is a Series of Corrections I tell my students. And as the painting develops so does the appreciation for the place that I am looking at, and for the people that come here, and their dogs, and Thursday night at JCs, with the same two man band. And all the stories and intrigue and history. The depth of a place is not immediately understood.

It’s like going to a castle…..and saying “that’s a castle!”. But then a tour guide tells you the history of the castle, and it becomes much more than a castle. it becomes an incredibly rich tapestry of stories, which is what every place and every person inherently is: An incredibly rich tapestry of stories.

My last morning here and Reed is off fishing. The sun is full ablaze and the desert alive with bird sound, broken only by the occasional truck passing by on the the road below. There’s a distant radio…the dog shuffles on her sleeping mat and goes back to sleep. Time is different here.

Feliz Samana Santa!!

Mesa like mountains from the Sierra Grande range arise from the Sea of Cortez and I am staying right at their feet, looking up at the naked stone, crumpled with eons of seismic activity, dotted with cactus and caves, hideouts for goats and imagined outlaws.

Below is the drawing in preparation for a watercolor. If it was just a stand alone drawing I would push the values and the line hierarchy. I don’t expect you to know the term “Line hierarchy” - It is organizing line weight difference in a drawing so as to maximize spatial and compositional effect.

The resultant painting is posted below. Rush ahead if you must.

On the day I did this drawing, many other things occurred.: Encountering a pod of dolphins while fishing, watching Bill Gate’s yacht pull into the bay (complete with helicopter) and seeing the Space X rocket blaze across the sky. We had no idea what it was at the time. Quite otherwordly.

Days have been weirdly full in this fairly remote corner of the world. My friend Reed is remodeling a property here at Playa El Coyote with the intent of turning it into a glamping/retreat destination. He is well on his way to completion. He’s also an adventure guide: Fishing, paddle boarding, snorkeling, hiking. There is no couch potatoing going on at Luna Negra.

For instance, today we climbed the mountain that I painted. It is right out the back door. And wow, was that an adventure! No trail, just finding our way around boulders and cactus, and up chutes of rock. Dizzying heights. You had to have your wits about you. Much of the stone is amalgam, a fused combination of rocks, which makes for good hand holds….when it doesn’t come loose.

It was up and up and up, and an incredible view of the bay. Also, it was raining! Which is pretty rare here, but that helped abate the mid-day heat.

Getting down was just as difficult; finding a new route down a steep dried out water course. Some cuts and bruises acquired as boulder hopping fatigue set in. But it is such a satisfying feeling to be up in nature’s grill and not just seeing it from afar. Between the painting and the climbing, I will remember these mountains well.

Foot of a Desert Mountain at Playa El Burro

Reed’s in the Morning Sun

Here I am at the Baja coast on the Sea of Cortez, reveling in the change of climate and the overdose of sun. marveling at the power of Desert Nature: The cactus and mesquite, exposed mountains made of walls of crumpled rock (a geologists wet-dream) that edge the brilliant blue sky while vultures circle and but few clouds skitter.

The sea gets a darker blue as the winds pick up in the afternoon. The whole mode here is “tranquilo”; chill, relax. Something that I need on a regular basis and what the world could use as well.

The above painting was done at my friend Reed’s hacienda Luna Negra. The subject is a stone room surrounded by bougainvillea vines. It fits in the desert nicely and seemed a good place to start for this trip.

Painting is very simlar to meditation. You have to sit and focus and quell the monkey mind that insists that you could and should be doing something different, because any time you do anything you are neglecting everything else; robbing the world of attention.

What’s the point anyway? No one will buy it…..It’s not that good…..The style is too old timey….The composition is all wrong…..You don’t know how to use watercolors….. and AI could produce 10,000 mages in the same amount of time….probably more.

TMI monkey mind. You’re on a wheel that never stops turning, and I’m doing this painting so I can get off that wheel for a bit. So I can relate to something without just labeling it and walking on. Soak it in, interact, interpret, see a scene change as it marches through a day.

It’s takes a while to really see something, and we rarely take that time. Painting forces you to see one thing at a time and to string these observations together like the beads that make a necklace. A painting is not an instant captured, it is many instances fused together into a singularity.

Every once in awhile I join my friend Reed Nicholson down at his place in Baja, in a little place called Playa El Coyote.

In two weeks I will return. The below drawings are from 4 years ago where, when arriving, I lost my cell phone on the bus, so I spent the rest of the week sketching. It was fantastic.

I don’t want to lose my phone this time, but I do hope to have the discipline to spend way more time drawing and painting than “cell phoneing”

Arroyo View from the Lookout

Playa El Burro

JC’s Beachside Cafe

Mago’s en Mulage

View of the Sound from Maury Marine Park

Hello! It’s been awhile!

I thought I would reconnect with this pictoral “Ode to Vashon Island”; the place where I have lived, loved and created for the past 36 years.

All the work was made between 10 years ago and the present. When I am in the thick of making things I am often wrapped in questions like: Is it good enough? Will it sell? Things that do not really matter after you get a few years perspective.

What is important is that they tell a story of a place. That is what remains.

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/BmmFnbDPHeM

Enjoy

Fauntleroy Ferry Dock - graphite on 8x5 98# paper.

“TRIPLASH” is a term I just coined, which is the feeling you get upon returning from an amazing trip, where the exotic, new and amazing is suddenly replaced with the same ole familiar miracle of your ordinary life.

I had TRIPLASH upon returning from Europe a year ago, and the antidote wound up being going out and painting again, which allowed me to reconnect to where I was.

And isn't that the the primary purpose of art, to awaken to the now?

So I did these drawings while waiting in the ferry line, and ya know….it really works. Just the process of methodically cataloging what you see in front of you has a very settling effect on my payche.

Whether the drawings are “good” or not is not important. It's the doing, the being with, the re-establishing a connection to place, that is important.

And for me, a functional necessity.

Vashon Ferry Line - graphite on 8x5 98# paper