Meanwhile on a beach far far away...

All pieces 6"x6" on masonite

A friend with a home in this gorgeous place shared these pics, and a whole lot more. With cropping I can get hundreds of paint subjects out of them.   My lifetime aversion to landscape painting, being entirely based on not wanting to schlep materials around to places without a bathroom, is now entirely dissipated.  My recent discoveries of painting on black backgrounds in black and white then going in with color works so well with these, and very very fast.  The two on the top are entirely acrylics, the color is from pastels painted down with medium and the two bottom ones have a black and white acrylic underpainting and the color layer is liquin and oil paint.  The colors aren't exactly what I would have liked, especially with the all acrylic pieces but all my acrylic colors have been taken away by the other artist in the family who is currently working on portraits in another location.  You would think we would have two sets, but he doesn't really use them too often and if he's willing to do the portraits, always a job from hell, he is welcome to them.  These are little pieces, 6x6 inches on masonite, with charcoal colored chalk paint for gesso. Great surface.  I played a recording of nature sounds on the Oregon coast in the background while I worked on them, and could damn near smell the salt.
One more thing - I have been battling a problem with proportions for my entire professional life, and always doing paintings where that is important.  I'm simply not good at it, and have learned a whole host of work arounds.  It is nearly impossible for me to get a good likeness of a human even with all my tricks, it is just not one of my skills.  I mean, I can get it to look human easily enough, but a family resemblance is about as close as I ever come.   Now, it turns out that with a landscape you can get it way off and it is still just fine.  I can't believe it has taken fifty years to figure this out.  Also that I never thought to work from photos before.  I use photos for everything else.  Everything.  Blind spots are really interesting.