Category: Outdoors/Landscape

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Art business Drawing Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages

Between a Rock and… a Request for Help

Moss Rock Grows Moss, ink, Pentel Brush Pen & watercolor
Moss Rock Grows Moss (typo--it's 2011!) ink, Pentel Brush Pen & watercolor

After ten years this very large rock sold to me as a “Moss Rock” and installed in my front garden has finally grown a patch of moss. It looked so pretty and the day was unseasonably warm and sunny so I couldn’t resist going out to sketch it. I sat on my porch and drew the mossy rock while my usually indoor kitties joined me in the sun.

And now my request for advice:

I need help figuring out how to sort/store my oil paintings. I have at least a hundred oil paintings and plein air studies on panels (probably more) that I’ve done over the past few years. I’m sure for some people it’s simple: just sell them all.

But if you’re like me and still have many paintings on hand, I’d love to hear how you organize, catalog, store and/or protect them from damage. I have many watercolors on paper in large flat files sorted by subject matter, with drawers labeled accordingly. But I haven’t figured out a good system for my oils.

When I get a request from someone wanting to purchase a painting it can be challenging to find it and I always have my fingers crossed that it hasn’t gotten damaged.

My questions:

ORGANIZING: Do you store your paintings by subject? Size? Date? Inventory number (requires entering in art tracking program)? OR…just skip the organizing and spend the time painting instead?!!

STORAGE: Should they be separated with wax paper when stored touching each other? Does it matter if they’re in the dark?  My garage is fairly dry but not insulated so is affected by weather. Is it ok to store oils on panels in Clearbag envelopes to protect their surface?

At the beginning of the year I usually sort through the past year’s paintings stored vertically on shelves like books in my studio. I dump the losers, label the keepers, and move older paintings to shelves in the garage. This year I had the flu during my two-week holiday vacation so never did the “dump and sort” so paintings have piled up in the studio shelves and storage closet and there are more drying.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Virtual Paint-Out

Romanian Winter Hayride (Virtual Paintout)

Romanian Winter Hayride, oil painting on panel, 9x12"
Romanian Winter Hayride, oil painting on panel, 9×12″ (SOLD)

After rambling around Romania, seeing beautiful summery farmland, busy cities, and a shepherd walking his sheep down a village street, suddenly it was Christmas with nativity scenes in front yards and this wonderful snowy hayride (virtually, of course via Google Streetview for the Virtual Paintout).

Romanian Winter Hayride Reference Photo
Bicaz-Chei, Romania: Winter Hayride Reference Photo

Yesterday I’d tried painting a different Romania scene (below) but soon realized I was laboring joylessly on a hopeless painting, fighting paint the consistency of toothpaste. I gave up, scraped off the panel (glad I’ve gotten smarter about when to cut my losses), and returned to Google’s wonderful new MapCrunch.com where I found the above photo.

Continue reading “Romanian Winter Hayride (Virtual Paintout)”
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Building Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Sketchcrawl Stanford Urban Sketchers

International Sketchcrawl #30 at Stanford University

Rodin Sculpture Garden Trees, Stanford, ink & watercolor
Rodin Sculpture Garden Trees, Stanford, ink & watercolor

It was fun to meet the South Bay members of our Urban Sketchers SF Bay Area group Suhita and John, and to meet some of the members of Sketchcrawl Silicon Valley at the Stanford sketchcrawl on Saturday. Cathy and I made the hour plus drive down there and met at noon. We started with lunch at the outdoor cafe with a view of the Rodin Sculpture Garden (sketched above at the end of the day after everyone left and it is my favorite because I love those funny, imperfectly groomed trees).

Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center
Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center

My first sketch was the one above, of a statue called “Faith” in front of the Cantor Center for Visual Arts. Starting with “Faith” seemed good, since it helps to have a little faith that the sketching will go well.  By 1:00 there were about 10 of us and everyone went off to follow their muses with a plan to regroup around 3:00. I followed Cathy who knew her way around, since my muse, like me, has no sense of direction.

Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor
Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor

The sign on the building said “Memorial Arch and Court Erected by His Mother, 1898 in Memory of Leland Stanford Jr. Born to mortality May 14, 1868…” I ran out of room to record his year of death but he only lived until age 16 so his mother donated the land Stanford was built on to create a memorial for her son.

Chapel and courtyard
Chapel and courtyard

From a distance the front of the chapel appears to be glowing gold but when you get closer you can see it’s covered with a stunning mural made entirely in mosaic. Coming from an urban environment where things are crowded, noisy and grungy, Stanford was amazing. The Stanford campus is tremendously spread out (over 8,000 acres), with most buildings only one or two stories, but massive nonetheless. Everything is immaculately clean, with amazing gardens, gazillions of trees (well, officially 43,000), and quiet. At $51,000 a year for tuition, room and board I suppose one should expect a lovely environment!

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Art theory Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Photos Places

Sit Stay Cafe Girl Sketch in Oils

Sit Stay Cafe Girl, oil on panel, 10x8"
Sit Stay Cafe Girl, oil on panel, 10x8"

When I painted this oil sketch I had three inspirations: First was the Peggi Kroll Roberts video focusing on designing value patterns by simplifying and grouping values, even when the colors are different (e.g. the red umbrella and green trees above are very different colors but approximately the same values).

Curan: Afternoon in the Cluny Garden
Curran: Afternoon in the Cluny Garden

My second inspiration was the Curran painting above that I saw at the Impressionists show at the DeYoung Museum. I fell in love with this painting because of the colors, strong values and abstract qualities and brought home a print. Charles Courtney Curran was an American artist who studied with the Impressionists in Paris in the 1880s and then returned to the U.S. His other work I’ve seen online doesn’t appeal to me at all, too sugary and romantic.

Original photo reference with face blurred for anonymity
Original photo reference with face blurred for anonymity

I was also inspired by my reference photo (above) that I took at the Sit Stay Cafe at Pt. Isabel’s dog park where I was lunching, sketching and taking photos to test a new camera last summer.

The tired young woman was very kind about allowing me to sketch and take photos of her. She told me she also liked to paint. Since I didn’t ask for permission to post her picture online I blurred her face in Photoshop first.

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Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos Places Plein Air Sonoma

Viansa Vineyard: Final Touches on Final Plein Air 2010

Viansa Vineyard, 11/2010-1/2011, Oil painting, 9x12"
Foggy Morning at Viansa Vineyard, 11/2010-1/2011, Oil painting, 9x12"

My plein air group had our last meeting of the season in November at Viansa Winery in Sonoma. I’d made a good start on the painting plein air, but it needed work. Today I got tired of looking at the unfinished painting and completed it (above), using both brushes and palette knife.

I’d set up my easel at the edge of the parking lot and had a great view of the vineyard. But there were so many interesting things to see that I included all of them in my original painting below (except maybe the cars and the birds and bees—that’s some progress I suppose).

Viansa Vineyard, unfinished plein air
Viansa Vineyard, unfinished plein air

There are some passages in the painting I liked, especially the top fourth, but there were some problems too: the strong yellow diagonal line leading you out of the painting, the bright gold triangle top right, the green line of bushes beside the purple road, both of which weren’t needed even though they were there in real life.

Viansa photo reference
Viansa photo reference

This is the photo I took at the beginning of the painting session. The sun and fog and clouds kept changing but the overall impression I had of the day was sunny.

A previous Viansa painting can be seen here. It’s nice to see the progress I’ve made since then.

 

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Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Tormey, CA: Plein air oil painting

 

Tormey View, Oil on board, 9x12"
Tormey View, Oil on board, 9x12"

 

It’s nice to remember those sunny summer and fall days when painting outdoors required sunscreen, not rain gear. Back in October I painted this view from the former refinery “company town” of Tormey. Now Tormey is just a couple blocks long on the edge of the Tosco Oil Refinery near Crockett. At the end of the main (only?) street  is a small paddock with horses and goats. It was a fun place to paint.

I did 75% of the painting onsite and finished it in the studio from this photo:

 

Reference photo for Tormey, CA
Reference photo for Tormey, CA

Now it’s another rainy Sunday here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but after a great walk in the hills between showers, I’m happy to be in the studio working on several paintings in progress.

 

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Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Places Sacramento Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Urban Sketcher Trip to Sacramento Part II

Tower Bridge over Sacramento River, ink & watercolor
Tower Bridge over Sacramento River, ink & watercolor

Continuing on from yesterday’s post, we left the Crocker and walked a few blocks to Sacramento’s Old Town to meet up with Urban Sketcher Pete Scully who lives nearby in Davis. Then we all stopped to draw this beautiful bridge, which is actually painted with gold metallic paint, unlike the Golden Gate Bridge which is painted a red-orange, and is not gold at all.

Eagle Theater, ink & watercolor
Eagle Theatre, ink & watercolor

Old Town is several square blocks of restored Gold-Rush era buildings with board walks instead of sidewalks, old trains, horse-drawn carriages, and a few people in costume like this woman (who, when I asked if I could sketch her, told me she was just waiting for her husband to come out of the restroom, and indeed left after 5 minutes). It’s very rustic, and while a bit touristy, is not nearly as bad as Fisherman’s Wharf or Pier 39 in San Francisco.

Sacramento Amtrak Station Exterior
Sacramento Amtrak Station Exterior

My last sketch of the day was the exterior of the Amtrak station in Sacramento. The building is very ornate and I would have liked to spend more time accurately capturing some of the details but my eyes were burning from some nearby idling diesel buses so had to go indoors.

There’s a Starbucks at the other end of this block-long building and I ran down there to get a latte for the ride home and then almost missed the train. On the trip back we shared our sketchbooks and relaxed; such a pleasure compared to driving.  I want to plan some more train sketching trips soon!

Be sure to also check out Pete Scully’s sketches of the day on his blog and Cathy and Sonia’s sketches on our Bay Area Urban Sketchers blog.

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Building Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Virtual Paint-Out

Rio de Janeiro: Virtual Paintout

Rio de Janeiro, oil on panel, 8x8"
Rio de Janeiro, oil on panel, 8x8"

This month’s Virtual Paint-Out location is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Since I seldom travel I find it so much fun to do so virtually via Google Street View. I love being able to wander, exploring roads to see where they go without fear of getting lost (let alone dealing with airports or spending the money).

Here’s the way the scene looked on Google and then the way I cropped and the way I adjusted it in Photoshop.

Original Google Street View, Rio
Original Google Street View, Rio
Rio Photoshopped for painting
Rio Photoshopped for painting

As I do these each month I’ve noticed patterns in the way nicer houses and neighborhoods are near beaches or on top of hills and the poorer neighborhoods are indeed on the wrong side of the tracks.

I’ve also noticed a sense of freedom when painting these since I don’t have so much investment in the outcome. And maybe that’s what led to my liking most of my Virtual Paintout paintings more than the ones I’ve labored over.

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Art theory Bay Area Parks Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Pointlessly Persistent? It’s Just What I Do

Hills Above Crockett, oil on board, 9x12"
Hills Above Crockett, oil on board, 9x12"

This oil landscape painting started as a poorly drawn, wrongly colored plein air painting which I’ve reworked many times until I am now finally ready to call it done. The painting started on a hot September day when I dragged my painting gear up a trail and set up my easel amidst dried cow pies and weeds near the Bull Valley Staging Area above the hills of Crockett. You can see my learning process below.

First, here is the washed-out reference photo I had to work from back in the studio. It’s really not even an interesting scene and doesn’t at all capture the way the hills were glowing a brilliant end of summer California gold.

Continue reading “Pointlessly Persistent? It’s Just What I Do”
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Art theory Bay Area Parks Berkeley Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Grey Day at Lake Anza

Grey Day at Lake Anza, plein air (mostly) oil on Gessoboard, 10x8"
Grey Day at Lake Anza, plein air (mostly) oil on Gessoboard, 10x8"

Only two of us showed up to paint at Lake Anza in Tilden Park on an almost-drizzly, grey Monday morning last month. The air smelled fresh and clean and it was so quiet there; a wonderful change from the noise of the city just a few miles away.

I painted most of this onsite, with some corrections and clean up later in the studio from the photo below.

Lake Anza reference photo
Lake Anza reference photo

One of the corrections I made was to the little clumps of marsh grasses on the other side of the lake (barely visible in the revised painting). They had been my focal point but I realized when I got home and looked at the photo that I had made them three times bigger than they should have been.

Yesterday I was painting in Sonoma and saw the same problem when I got home: I painted some distant trees way bigger than they should be. It’s interesting to me how as I focus on one element of painting and begin to improve it (like composition, values, color, etc.), I discover another area needing work. Next time I’ll pay attention to measuring/comparing sizes of the things in the painting.

While I’m still miles of canvas away from mastering plein air painting, at least I am beginning to grasp the principles and see that while there are many important concepts to consider out there, the list isn’t endless (as it once seemed). Maybe eventually it will become more automatic like driving; I’ll  still have to pay attention and keep my eyes on the “road,” but I won’t be driving over curbs, crashing into things, or totaling my car/canvas.