Metro Venus

Spontaneous "I don't care what I do because it's just for fun" type of painting done with acrylic paint on paper. Used it for a friend's dance poster. I later tried to do it on canvas twice but it lost the fun part.

Color and Shapes

Tea for one

No, this isn't my tea table. It does remind me of the kind of talk women friends have over cups of tea and coffee. Now we do it online with our separate unseen cups of something hot. I enjoy sketching the things and places that don't belong to me, a way of bringing it home.

Linda's Patio

To color or not to color. Done with Dr. Martin watercolors which fade. It's nice to visit friends that love to decorate so I can sketch it.

More from Randy's Place

Someone else's bits and pieces seem more intersting than my own. I did the mask in one sitting, laying down the watercolor without sketch to save time.

He really did have red everywhere, frig, cabinets, tapestries.

View from the living room towards the kitchen.

Leaves

Playing with grape leaf shapes. Sorry to see more dairy farms turned into vineyards. Clover makes creamy dairy products. I'm sure the lush surroundings make for contented cows. Petaluma Dairy plays classical music in the mailking shed. Their store offers cheese and sausage for a light picnic near an attractive pond and grass.

Randy's Place

Randy's place in the hills above Santa Rosa, Sonoma County. Off and on again music promoter, past life as a guru in India, wheeled and dealed across Europe.

Lots of stories about people, places, music, artists, the 60's. Sonoma's full of people and stories.

His dining table is a telephone cable spool, like the ones people had when free was everywhere, free love, free clinic, freedom from a lot of things. But it was a dream. Last I heard, Randy was living quietly with his horse, his sweat teepee at the top of the hill, taking care of his garden, keeping up with land maintenance.

Bodega

Antique shop in the little (tiny) town of Bodega. Good spot to stop, have coffee at the Filling Station, steal a sketch, before continuing on to Bodega Bay. Cold and windy, note the sign blowing in the wind, quick sketch before fingers get too cold. Not a whole lot in Bodega Bay but the drive is lovely and it is where Hitchcock filmed "The Birds".

Where the flower children settled

This is Grace's den. She raised a large family by shopping garage sales.

Rohnert Park is a bedroom community started in the 60's, about an hour north of San Francisco. The hippies flowed up from the city for the lush countryside, making music in San Rafael, performing at the Mystic in Petaluma, The Inn at the Beginning in Cotati, settling everywhere, east to Davis, Sacramento, into the foothills. The music, tie die t-shirts, long gypsy skirts are still there. Grace was never a hippie herself but bits and pieces of their crafts came into her homr, like the macrame owl.

During the wet winters we would all think about the flowers we wanted to plant in spring.