When I was traveling freely last fall I was in a rhythm of painting regularly. I had eliminated distractions and reduced the overhead in my lifestyle so there were no barriers to productivity. I highly recommend this to anyone who questions their creative productivity; see what you can do when you have cast aside all those things that we normally need to do. After the first month it had integrated into a very enjoyable lifestyle, but I couldn't afford it forever. Now I have part-time work with four day weekends leaving what seems like plenty of time but still there is too much to do. My time is filled with laundry, paying bills, studio cleaning, shopping, cooking, softball and other social drinking, I have to make time to paint more, finish rough sketches from outdoors, and write and scan. It wasn't coming naturally so instead of sitting blankly in front of this computer I went out and painted around here.

Kate lives in Point Reyes, also has part time work, and is always up for a painting day. Wednesday was a rare day of no fog at all. We met in town, bought some lunch and water and hiked out to a cove where a landslide has closed the trail, and sat down in the shade of a small grove of pines with a view of the landslide, mud flats and cove.

I liked Kate's small sketch better:

Kate St. Clair paints beautiful small watercolors around Point Reyes - to see more of her work please email mv@vinsel.com and I'll relay you to Kate.

That afternoon while Kate had a massage I stopped by the Inverness store and did a very quick sketch of the view across Tomales Bay, with afternoon sun just starting to show the soft folds of Elephant Mountain.

Kate and I enjoyed a nice dinner in the shade of her backyard, and I drove back to Oakland.

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A friend who lives down there told me he'd seen the commercial salmon fishing and party boats right in behind the surfers, so I headed down on my next free day with shooting head fly gear. It is a lifelong goal of mine to catch a salmon on a fly, from shore on the open ocean. I hiked out on the Jetty with my two-handed rod and lead core line that I can throw a hundred feet. There were no boats or birds either, and a small group of boats about a mile out showed where the fish were now. After casting fruitlessly for the practice of it I turned around from the open ocean and sketched the thin veil of fog as it edged towards the harbor and hillside in the cooling of the late afternoon.