This just arrived fedex. "No Easy Way" describes the book and the process of getting there, but the results are really quite pleasing. 32 pages. Period costumes! Human drama! Baseball! History with a great moral. Lucia Monfried and Irene Vandervoort get the design kudos, and the award of the century for patience. Solid story and if you have kids who like baseball, especially TED WILLIAMS, then this is a great book about perseverence, drive, and Ted's amazing .406 1941 season. Coming out this Fall.

The paperback version of this showed up today. This was a fun cover to paint, and a good manuscript to read. Got 1o year olds who care about baseball or history? Got Redsox fans in the family?The art director did a good job on this one, I thought, especially with the warmer surround of the image.

Philip Nix, a dear friend, just retired from Sonoma Country Day School, the remarkable institution that he founded on a dream and a promise 26 years ago. Many children, ours included, and their parents, have been propelled forward by that promise. I was inspired by Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington to paint Philip as "Father to his Country - Day School" after seeing Stuart's rendition of our founding father that is on display in the Phoenix Art Museum. He was amused. It was good.

Having suddenly forgotten how to link my blog, i am, instead, gonna recommend that you go to: lisaberrett.blogspot.com if you want to see great design and drawing all at the same time.

Sketches in airports, or why America needs to diet...

Here are a couple paintings in descending order. First day, it was really overcast and grey. WOW! Nearly rained. Great flat light. So quiet and green! First looks west to Laguna de Santa Rosa, the dry one. Second, in the afternoon when the sun peaked through. Craig Nelson complained that I made him look a bit too, ugh, round..... That was a really fast effort on a too smooth panel. A little loosey goosey as a result. Time to do a little studio clean up!

DeLoach Vineyards is west of Santa Rosa. One forgets how quickly one drives out of a city and into a thriving agricultural paradise. It is this way all over Sonoma County, and the transition is most acute west out of SR. DeLoach owned by a french wine conglomerate, JCB, is a beautiful, biodynamically farmed vineyard in the rolling hills and swales of the Russian River watershed. Beautiful vineyards and most delightfully generous hosts who plied us with excellent wine (their pinots are all quite distinct, one from the other, and delicious), food, and the presence of their attentive staff and very dynamic boss Jean Charles Boisset.
Jean Charles is in the white shirt. Susan Toland is addressing the group after lunch. Susan is the organizational whiz from the Academy who managed this whole event. Also seen are painters and sculptors all doing their thing.
Hats off and big thanks you to Susan, Jean Charles, Elisa, and all the staff at DeLoach.

Monday and Tuesday, a number of us Academy of Art University faculty and alums get a chance to paint at De Loach Vineyards, courtesy of the University and DeLoach Vineyards. Summer greens should be upon us in the wine country, and I have augmented my palette to match wits with Mother Nature. The colors and shapes promise the possibility of some good plein air work. Works from the event get juried into a show at their vineyard. I am looking forward to this for sure!

Cathy had a significant birthday, and, as I couldn't hire Remy from 'Ratatouille' to make a cameo for her ( she is in the cooking world) his cousin had to stand in... You have to wait for the punch line.

Irises. In my front yard, a warmup for the rest of SPA. Quite the challenge for me, as I don't normally paint flowers. Spring is just so beautiful.

more sonoma plein air. These four were painted on last friday. I so loved painting the combine in the hay field. I see it sitting there amongst the half shorn fields, awaiting the farmer's return. The contrast of shapes and colors just knocks me out. The cows were just fun to sketch as they walked, and the barn was a shot at making noon time look interesting. Shapes are the driver at that time of day.

Sonoma Plein Air 2009 has come and gone. I got two and a half whole days to paint, for which I am deeply grateful. These show some of the work. Beauty of it is that it raises money for arts funding in Sonoma schools, k-12. In seven years, over 258,000 has been raised for art supplies, a boon to the schools as we found out the entire art supply budget for one school was $200, and the other school, where the teacher also taught, had ZERO. A travesty.
The barn painting I named 'Darth Vader's Barn' as it looks, in silhouette, like you know who's helmet. It sold at the gala auction

yeah yeah, another one...

Ernest Blumenschein, a great illustrator, an astonishing painter. Today I am in Phoenix and going back a second day to the Phoenix Art Museum ( a darned nice museum) looking at over fifty paintings by a genius of the twentieth century.If you are a painter, go to the link, check the dates, GET ON A PLANE AND GO see the masterworks. He has absorbed the colors of the southwest, the design influences of early 20th century modernism, and melded them with classically trained drawing, composition and narrative to such a degree as to simply blow your mind with the power of the paint. The tiny jpeg does no justice.

http://www.phxart.org/exhibition/exhibitionrhythm.aspx