Bristly-stemmed Checker Mallow

Bristly-stemmed Checker Mallow

The hike along Cascade Head is one of the most spectacular on the Oregon coast. If you can tear your eyes away from the distant views of rugged coastline and crashing waves to look down at your feet, you will see an beautiful array of wildflowers blooming in the windswept meadows in spring. The conditions […]

Oregon Silverspot Butterfly

Oregon Silverspot Butterfly

Insects…the good, the bad and the ugly…they are all around us. Few of us stop to think that without them we would all perish because if we had no pollinators we would eventually have no food, not to mention all of the other myriad things that they contribute to the ecosystem. Now I must admit […]

Coastal Adventure

Coastal Adventure

On a recent weekend, a member of Oregon Botanical Artists hosted several of us for a two-day “Coastal Botanical Adventure”.  We visited four different ecosystems in two days, all within ten miles of our base.  On the first morning we hiked through deep forest near Fort Clatsop in the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park. […]

Lytle Lake at Rockaway, OR

I sketched this scene of a lake near the beach last weekend. The house we were staying at had huge picture windows, so I got to sit on the couch in comfort while I painted. It almost seemed like cheating!  The willows along the far shore were starting to change color and they glowed when […]

Sea Foam and Waves

Watercolor in Moleskine I had some great chances to sketch Watercolor in Moleskine while we were at the Oregon coast last week.  The first couple of days were pretty chilly so I took advantage of the view from our motel room to try to capture the look of the waves crashing on the rocks.  The […]