Today I stayed in the neighborhood. I just drove down a street until I saw an attractive tree. Guess what!! It was another sycamore. We're rationing water here in L.A. so the lawn in front of it was brown, but the tree was pretty. You can see the scene in the left photo. I decided to crop the scene a bit and just focus on the lovely bark patterns which help make sycamores so attractive.


It was an interesting morning. Usually when I paint outdoors I either try to stay out of the way or I'm in a whole group of painters so most people don't come up to talk. Today was different.

First the teenage girls who lived in the house with the tree came out "to see what I was drawing". At that point I had only put one dash of dark paint across the canvas so there wasn't much to see. After telling me that the tree was going to be famous, they left. Next a lady driving by stopped to ask if she could come see what I was doing. When she got out of her car and walked up, the painting was at the stage .... well, let's just say it was a mess. We had a nice chat and she said some encouraging words and left. When I was close to finishing a man who had been out walking stopped to chat. Thank goodness there was finally someone who saw something that LOOKED something like the scene in front of me. I was working on the bark patterns that I find so intriguing. We had a really nice chat. I gave him my card and when he left I was feeling pretty good. --- Glad I had decided to paint in my neighborhood and not hide.

As Mr. Rogers used to say, "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood."