little bird II at the end , the very end, of my painting day
6:15 PM: as i am prone to do, just before walking out the door and going to the house to meet mikela and go walking up the trail, i glanced at little bird II and found it…..yes, predictable and thus a tad boring. i strode over to my collaging table and, after playing around with spacing and using the scissors to cut and crop two pieces of a cut up map, i added them to the painting. the blues of the map lifted the painting to another level, and balanced the pale orange to the right of the little bird.
2:22 PM: I started the second little bird to send to my new grand daughter. i’ll continue working on it for a little while, and then mikela and I plan on taking our trail walk. I don’t know the names of either of these little birds, so little bird I and little bird II will have to do!
the combination of blues, yellows and reds is yet another masterpiece of nature, with the black around her beak sealing the deal!
little bird II 6.75x6.50” watercolor & gouache on arches
portrait of my dad, roy tarlow, 2004
12:24 PM: while searching my flat files for tracing paper, I came across the 1994 painting in watercolor of mikela at David Hockney’s Malibu house, 1994.
we used to visit him regularly in his hollywood hills house, and he had just purchased this one so it was our first time. right on the beach, it was really lovely. we had some lunch together and walked on the beach.
during the same search, in the same drawer, I discovered this little portrait of my dad, painted in 1994, a year before he passed.
mikela at Hockney’s Malibu house, 1994