When your Central California artist is undecided, she practices something called “productive procrastination”. Yardening for a friend, making yogurt, running errands, visiting with a far-away friend through the wonders of technology, reporting 10 robocalls to the Do Not Call Registry Complaint page, and then I saw Tucker outside the kitchen door. He is so shy and has been avoiding me for several months, so when he came to visit, I had to go sit outside with him for awhile.

All this fiddling around gave me a chance to ponder an idea, so I finally headed to the painting studio to try it.

Digging in the dirt was my reward for getting that painting finished. (Trail Guy helped because there is a lot of decomposed granite that is actually so composed that it is hard to get a shovel through.)

Feeling confident because of success with the previous painting, I tackled this one. It was too flat, and there was nothing to look at in the scene. Being there in the spring is wonderful, but I don’t have the skill to make it look so good in a 2-dimensional format.

A friend said that if I was an impressionistic painter, this would be considered finished. If she saw it in person, she’d probably change her mind, because the old picture is coming through a bit. Besides, it was the end of the day and I was painting with a lamp instead of daylight.