There's a slow drizzle of rain going on outside at the moment so it's a fine Sunday afternoon inside catching up on laundry and the like. The weather forecasters here in San Diego are rumored to have the easiest job on earth: sunny and 65 degrees... all the time. But I don't agree. I think it's very difficult to predict the weather due to air masses coming at us from the Pacific north west or the Gulf of Mexico not to mention the southern Pacific ocean.

The easiest way to know what the weather is going to be is to simply look out your window. But then again, take this morning. At 8AM it was sunny and we could see a bright blue ocean and a sky that hosted just a few clouds. Now just before noon, what do we have? Rain!

See, a landscape painter's life revolves around the weather. The weather conditions determine your day to a great extent. Is it nice and sunny? OK, then I'm going out to paint. Is it raining? OK, then I'm for sure working in the studio!

This landscape painter has been working quite a bit in the studio of recent days as I figure out the ocean and all of her moods and faces. From morning to night, from sunny to rainy, it's all different at the ocean. I swear the Pacific changes her mood about every 15 minutes or so!

In preparation for studio painting I spend hours staring at the ocean, the waves, and the sky, making sketches or taking notes, and backing it all up with photos of what I observe. It's a wonderfully entertaining and challenging adventure... and far from over:)

Here's my latest painting fresh from the easel, and as you can see this composition is fast becoming one of my faves: the angular look down the beach with breaking waves. If I paint it a hundred thousand times, each painting will be different... as is the ocean every 15 minutes;)

"Pacific Beach Afternoon", 12 by 24 inches, oil on canvas.

UPDATE: 4PM: The sun is out and it's a perfectly sunny post-storm afternoon! The water is a 1000 shades of green from lightest and most delicate teal to deepest emerald. Can't wait to paint that!!

I love to paint but the next best thing is watching someone else paint. If you look over a painters shoulder while she's at work then click on this link any Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday from 10:30 to 1PM, PST, to watch Denise Rich painting live. Other times you can play the tape of the last session.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/denise-rich-cow-and-western-painter

This landscape painter loves her paint brushes! Most of the painters I know leave their brushes for a good soak in a solvent after a session painting. Most just retrieve the brush from the soaking pot and wipe it dry before starting to paint again. Not me!

To set the record straight, I've had some of my brushes pushing 20 years now. Still have a few Edgar Degas by Grumbacher that must go back to at least 1990! Now that was a great brush: hog hair bristles from China (back when an import from China had a different meaning and they were known for the very best hog hair bristles) and a wooden shaft that fits the hand like a glove. Too bad I can't get those any longer.

Now I really like Isabey's Special made in France. They keep their shape well and can take a bit of abuse if I want to scrub in a wash to start a painting. The shaft is pretty good but not quite as curvy as the Edgar Degas. I did have one ferule (the metal part that holds the bristles to the shaft) separate from the wood... but Super Glue worked fine as an instant fix.

Good brushes are expensive! And with the cost of everything creeping up now it pays in the long run to take extra good care of your investment in brushes. Here's my method.

After a painting session I wipe as much of the oil paint from the brush as possible. The most difficult bit of paint to get at - and the one that will make your brushes lose shape fastest - is the paint that creeps up to meet the bottom of the ferule. If it dries there it pushes the bristles apart and that causes loss of good shape in the brush. So I wipe and scrub as best I can in that area... think of it as washing behind the toddler's ears;)

Next, I let the brushes soak a while (an hour or two) in Gamsol, an orderless mineral spirit (OMS) by Gamblin. I like it because tests show that it releases fewer solvent particles into the air than others making for a more environmentally friendly studio.

After the soak I again wipe the brushes as best I can with Scott paper towels. A lot of painters prefer Scott because of the low particle leave-behind. They're good!

Next the brushes get a bath using The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver and warm water. That takes care of removing any left-behind solvent or paint.

It's a complex ritual but it pays... my brushes are always sparkly clean and ready to preform as well as they did the first day I used them!

So what are my brushes busy doing lately? Catching the rough water of winter before spring takes over entirely... which should be any minute now! Here's the latest two paintings off my easel for your review.

"Winter Waves", 18 by 24 inches, oil on canvas

"After the Storm", 12 by 24 inches, oil on canvas.

This landscape painter has just come back from a quick trip to the desert and I gotta say, it's in bloom! I really look forward to going out to Anza-Borrego to check out the year's crop of desert wildflowers.

From December on, which is the beginning of our rainy season, I watch the weather report like others might follow a sports team. Did it rain hard in the mountains? Did the rain make it over the mountains to the desert? How much fell there? Are the days between rains hot enough  - but not too hot - so as bring out the flowers big-time? Have the blooms started yet? What's blooming right now?

This year's bloom is pretty good and worth the trip for sure. But last year's bloom was just a bit bigger. What's missing are the desert sand verbena, that purple ground cover. Don't know why they're not out but they sure are in shorted supply.

If you go, stay overnight because the desert sunrise is well worth it! I'll just have to paint that!!

Studio paintings of the desert will have to wait for a stretch because my attention is still all wet... continue to work on the ocean and sunset series. Here's the latest off my easel.

"Waves and Rocks", 16 by 20 inches, oil on canvas.

This landscape painter, as you can easily see by recent posts, is thoroughly infatuated by the place where land, ocean, and sky meet here in San Diego. You ever notice that the ocean will not stay still? It's in constant motion? If I were a portrait painter I'd tell it to "sit still for a while!" But I'm not and the ocean isn't listening to me... it's just doing its thing.

So the motion of the ocean is one aspect of this particular subject that fascinates. And then there's the light... through water. And reflections. And changing atmosphere or amount of moisture in the air to diffuse that light. Could drive a painter mad! Or at least fascinated;)

"Casa Beach", 12 by 24 inches, oil on canvas.