Category: Landscape

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Bay Area Parks Drawing Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plants Plein Air Sketchbook Pages

Tilden Botanical Garden Sketches

Pacific May Lilly at Tilden Botanical Garden, ink & watercolor, 4x6"
Pacific May Lilly at Tilden Botanical Garden, ink & watercolor, 4x6"

My plein air group met at Tilden Regional Parks Botanical Garden this cold and foggy morning. Since I wasn’t familiar with the park I explored a bit and then decided to sketch instead of trying to drag my painting gear around the hilly, pebbly paths. Since I only had my large Moleskine and a Micron Pigma .01 pen with me, I added watercolor later at home. The May Lilly above was so sweetly but delicately scented that drawing beside it was like breathing in a dessert.

Bridge & Creek, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Bridge & Creek, ink & watercolor, 5x7"

This bridge and creek was the first thing I sketched when I arrived, still arguing with myself about whether to go get my painting cart, whether to go home because it was too cold, whether to go home because I arrived late, how I should have brought my watercolors, how the scene was so complicated and so maybe I should just go home.

But as I drew,  I started noticing interesting details, how dark and light shapes lined up,  where one puzzle piece fit against the next, the design the water was making as it poured over rocks and down the creek, the sound of frogs and birds, and before I knew it that busy, chattering mind had shut off and I was having fun.

Manzanita Tree, Ink & watercolor, 5x16"
Manzanita Tree, Ink & watercolor, 5x16"

As I sketched this spectacular Manzanita, I began noticing how much like strong lean muscles the branches were, with their smooth, polished red surface. Then I found other human attributes: the knotholes looked like eyes while the bends in the branches looked just like elbows. This led me to consider the oneness of all things and I felt very connected to all the nature around me. During our critique at the end of the paint-out, we each take a turn showing our work and talking about our process. When I shared these thoughts someone laughingly asked what I’d eaten for breakfast! I was high on drawing, not Cheerios!

Cat Napping in the Buckwheat, rev2, Ink and watercolor
Cat Napping in the Buckwheat, Ink & watercolor, 4x6"

Walking to our critique, I spotted this garden kittie, having a nice nap in the buckwheat section of the garden and had to stop and sketch it. Nothing bothered this plump pussy who slept amidst the plants, little signs, wood chips and stones near the garden entrance. I added the whiskers with white gel pen.

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

Martinez Waterfront Park Plein Air Step by Step

6. Martinez Waterfront Final version
6. Martinez Waterfront, oil, 8x8"

When my plein air group at Martinez Waterfront Park last Saturday I really enjoyed the painting process despite getting a late start. Then I tinkered in the studio, never one to leave well enough alone. Above is the final version and below are the steps I took to get there, recorded just for fun. First is the thumbnail sketch/value study:

1. Thumbnail, pencil
1. Thumbnail/value study

Then I blocked in the colors using really thin paint at the average color of each of the large shapes and planes or puzzle pieces as I like to think of them.  I was pleased to see I did the drawing pretty well, and was able to fit everything on the square panel in about the same proportions as I saw them and as in my thumbnail sketch.

Continue reading “Martinez Waterfront Park Plein Air Step by Step”
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Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Places Sketchbook Pages

Sketchcrawl 22: Colusa Circle, Kensington/El Cerrito, CA

Colusa Market, Kensington, Ink & watercolor
Colusa Market, Kensington, Ink & watercolor

Today was International Sketchcrawl 22.  Martha had a morning event to attend so instead of joining the San Francisco group we met at 2:00 and sketched around the Colusa Circle in Kensington/El Cerrito. The sketch above is of my favorite grocery store, Colusa Market. Their produce is always fresh and delicious.

After a visit to pet the bunnies at Rabbit Ears, a pet store specializing in rabbits, and taking a peek into the Kensington Circus Pub (which was closed but would have been fun to sketch in) we took a hike through the nearby Sunset View Cemetery. I’ve painted there before and love the hilltop bay views and peaceful surroundings.

Sunset Cemetery, ink & watercolor
Sunset Cemetery, ink & watercolor

The fog rolled in and what had been a hot day turned chilly. Martha was cold and my butt fell asleep from sitting on a cement block so we headed back down to our cars. It was after 5:00 and time to say good bye. Not an all-day sketchcrawl this time but a good afternoon with excellent company on a beautiful day.

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Albany Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air Sketchbook Pages

Creek by 99 Ranch Market, Albany

Ranch Market Creek, ink & watercolor in Moleskine 7x5 wc sketchbook
Creek, ink & watercolor in Moleskine 7x5

I thought I was bringing my car in for an oil change, but the service manager told me it was way overdue for its 3 year/30,000 mile major maintenance (about 3 years overdue, as a matter of fact). I take public transit or walk whenever I can so my 2002 Toyota RAV 4 has less than 26,000 miles on it. I thought I could wait until 30,000 but he said no because the kind of short trips I take are harder on the car than lots of regular driving .

So I left it with him to do the full boogie on the car, feeling a bit sheepish at my car abuse. Despite the offer of a ride, I decided to walk the two miles home, hoping I’d find something fun to draw on the way. Sure enough a mile into the walk, I found this beautiful creek I never knew existed, half in the shade and half brilliantly lit with spring greenery all around.

As I was sketching and painting, an elderly Asian woman (99 Ranch Market is an Asian shopping center) showed me the bag of bread she was bringing for the resident ducks and then wandered off down the path, hoping to find them.

When I got home I realized I’d left all of my keys with the service manager. Oops…. But fortunately I have a “Plan B” for my keys, having locked myself out one too many times in the past.

And now my car seems so much perkier and happier with all new fresh fluids and the nice car wash they gave it. I’m very fond of my car, it’s always been totally reliable, and I really should treat it better.

Categories
Drawing Flower Art Gardening Gouache Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos Plants Sketchbook Pages

Botanical Sketches: Proteus

Proteus in Bloom, ink & gouache, Moleskine 5x7 sketchbook
Proteus in Bloom, ink & gouache, Moleskine 5x7 sketchbook

When I was walking to BART last week I ran into Fletch who had just finished shooting photos of an amazing Proteus  a few blocks from my house. I must have walked by this stunning plant a hundred times and never noticed it until he pointed it out to me. I couldn’t stop to sketch that morning but finally got back there this afternoon.

I got as close as I could without trespassing and sketched with my Micron Pigma .01 pen, trying to capture the many different forms the blossoms take along the way to fully blooming. Then I used my mini gouache palette and a tiny brush to paint the details.  Gouache seemed like a perfect medium for doing this kind of detailed botanical sketching.

I also took a bunch of photos of these amazing and diverse flowers. Here are a couple of them:

Photo of Proteus blossom
Photo of Proteus blossom
Proteus in bloom, photo
Proteus in bloom, photo

Note to self: Find proteus at a nursery and plant them! But first I want to do some larger botanical illustrations from my photos (or from life if I can convince the woman who owns the plant to allow me to take some cuttings). Fletch told me she reluctantly allowed him to take one.

And here’s a bit of etymological (word origin) trivia about theProteus:

The Proteus got its name because of its amazing diversity of form: It was named after the Greek sea god, Proteus, who was able to change his appearance at will.  From this comes the adjective “protean,” which means “versatile”, “mutable”, “capable of assuming many forms.” “Protean” has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.

Categories
Art theory Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Now I Am Having Fun!

View from Old Borges Ranch; Plein air, Oil on panel, 9x12"
View from Old Borges Ranch; Plein air, Oil on panel, 9x12"

I’m celebrating a bit of progress I saw today when I painted plein air at Old Borges Ranch in Walnut Creek. I painted at this site a year ago and had a terrible time, titling the post of the awful painting I did that day, “Am I Having Fun Yet? Uh…no!”

Today was a lot more fun. I started the painting with a plan (described below) and stuck with it until I started rushing to wrap it up in time for our group critique at 1:00 when I muddied things up a bit since the light had changed in the scene from when I first started at 10:30.

When I put the painting in the line up with the other 14 paintings, I didn’t even cringe or feel embarrassed. It helped too, that I now understand that my plein air paintings are sketches, not finished works of art.

Here are the steps I took that seemed to work for me:

Continue reading “Now I Am Having Fun!”
Categories
Art theory Colored pencil art Drawing Landscape Life in general Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting People

Hannah’s Reflection Revised

Hannah's reflection, oil on Gessobord 12x16"
Hannah's Reflection, oil on Gessobord 12x16"

After I posted this painting a few weeks ago I realized I’d left off the foamy bubbles on top of the water. Last weekend I worked on the painting some more, at first planning to just add the bubbles but ended up adding a whole new layer of paint. I gave Hannah another haircut and slimmed down her dress a bit. I felt a little afraid to go back in and start messing with things, but told myself to just have fun and see what happens.

I don’t think I quite got the essence of the foam, it looks more like rose petals floating on the surface, but I decided I liked that idea and left it alone.

I’m wondering if there is a problem with the grasses behind the rust colored reeds on the middle right that sort of point towards her head. Should that patch of yellow-green grasses have less texture, be cooler and more blurry so that they recede more? I think so.

Here’s what it looked like before in the original post:

Hannah's Reflection, Oil on Gessobord, 16x12
Hannah's Reflection, Oil on Gessobord, 16x12

I’m trying to get over the idea that paintings need to be completed in one painting session or in one day. Alla prima and plein air painting is great,  but so is letting layers dry and adding more more until the painting says it’s done. Sometimes it forgets to say “When” though, and then it’s overdone.

I have the same trouble with steaming vegetables. I lose my concentration and before I know it my broccoli has turned to mush. So is the revision mushy broccoli or an improvement? Do you think I should soften those grasses or move on?

Thinking about painting and broccoli reminds me of this poster I made a long time ago:

Listen to Your Broccoli, Colored Pencil, 24x18"
"Listen to Your Broccoli and It Will Tell You How to Eat It," Colored Pencil, 24x18"
Categories
Drawing Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Photos Sketchbook Pages

Can’t Stop the Seasons: Magnolias in Bloom

Magnolia Bloom, ink & watercolor wash
Magnolia Bloom, ink & watercolor wash

A new storm is on its way in but this morning was sunny so I took a walk in the neighborhood and discovered Spring had arrived overnight. The magnolias were blooming along with some other flowering trees.

Spring Trees, ink & watercolor wash
Spring Trees, ink & watercolor wash

The Jehovah’s Witnesses were also out in full bloom, a whole parade of them canvassing the neighborhood. These folks were waiting while their colleagues knocked on the door of a house on the top of the hill.

Witnesses on the Hill, Ink & watercolor wash
Witnesses on the Hill, Ink & watercolor wash

One of their team told me she liked to paint too, and then offered me some reading materials. “No thanks,” I said. “But it’s really, really small,” she said. It was a small pamphlet, but why would she think that would change my mind,  I wonder.

Can't Stop the Seasons
Can't Stop the Seasons, Photo

I thought about drawing this but decided a photo was good enough. Seeing the new season bursting forth in front of a sign saying “STOP” made me think about the ways we try to control things by making laws and rules and posting signs, and yet Mother Nature rolls along, no matter what we puny humans have to say about it.

I’m trying to use one sketchbook at a time and so, despite being tempted to switch to a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, I continued on in my Strathmore Drawing sketchbook. It’s not watercolor paper but is great for ink, is my favorite size (6×8″) and is light for carrying because it only has 24 sheets. It does wrinkle a bit from the watercolor, and it’s not good for lifting out color or heavy application, but it’s a good compromise between quality of paper and size and weight.

Categories
Art theory Landscape Oil Painting Painting People Photos Places

Hannah’s Reflection

Hannah's Reflection, Oil on Gessobord, 16x12
Hannah's Reflection, Oil on Gessobord, 16x12

My friend Gina emailed me a photo with a note saying, “I like the light in this photo– for some reason I always think of you when I look at it.” Although I rarely paint from photos, especially those taken by other people, I just had to paint this one. My computer monitor is set up so that I can paint directly from the image on the screen which is a lot better than working from the limited colors in a printed image.

I’m not sure if I’m done yet, but I couldn’t see what else was needed so I stopped. If you have any suggestions for improving the picture, I’d love to hear.

Below are some stages of the painting.  I used a bit of artistic license: I gave Hannah a bit of a haircut and deleted Gina’s wonderful dog Bella because:

  1. The dog was competing with Hannah as the focal point and was about the same size.
  2. I couldn’t get Bella to “read” as a dog; no matter how hard I tried to draw her correctly, she just kept turning into a jackrabbit.

Top row: 1) the finished painting; 2) my painting start; and 3) a black and white version of the start to see if my values were on track.

Middle row: 1) & 2) the next two steps in the painting. 3) a view of a “color spot” layer that I made in Photoshop. I created a new layer, and used Photoshop’s Paintbrush tool to select (Alt-click) and paint spots of those colors because it can be easier to see the colors when they’re isolated. Even more helpful than the color spots is a color-mixing tip I learned from Dianne Mize on Empty Easel: you apply the color to the edge of  a small card and compare it to the subject until you get it right.

Bottom row: three views of the original photo. 1)  “Posterized” in Photoshop down to two values; 3) posterized with three values; 3) Gina’s original photo.

P.S. This park, which Hannah affectionately calls the “swamp adventure,”  is part of the East Bay Regional Parks. It is a river front park next to McAvoy harbor in Bay Point. It’s a little delta oasis in the sprawl of East Contra Costa County.

Categories
Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A Cold Walk by Macaroni Grill, El Cerrito

Macaroni Grill on a cold day, ink & watercolor
Macaroni Grill on a cold day, ink & watercolor

On the last dayof vacation before returning to work, the world outside my windows looked raw, blustery and wet after a frost-covered morning. Hibernating sounded good, but I was feeling uninspired and blah and could tell if I stayed home I was just going to mope around. Since I needed to pick up my my sunglasses from the optometrist, I decided to walk up there.

I almost turned back after the first couple of blocks. My ears were cold and my feet were complaining. But I kept going and eventually began to perk up and enjoy myself. By the time I got to Peets Coffee (a mile later and across the street from my eye doctor’s office in El Cerrito Plaza) I was feeling enthusiastic and cheerful.  With a hot latte in my hand, I sat at a cafe table outside Peets and sketched this odd chain restaurant across the street.

I ate there once when it first opened (I was curious about the new restaurant in my neighborhood) and enjoyed it, but have never been able to get anyone to go back there with me. With so many unique and trendy restaurants in the Berkeley area, I suppose there’s really no reason to go to a “big box” version of an Italian restaurant, though people do seem to pack the place on weekends.

But I’ve always had an aversion to stupid business names, and the name “Macaroni Grill” irks me. I keep picturing the chef trying to grill slippery macaroni and cheese, with all the noodles falling through the grill grates. When I was a kid I remember being annoyed by a hair salon named “Lipstick Beauty Parlor,” which I thought made no sense.

New Sunglasses
New Sunglasses

While I was waiting at the optometris’ts office, I started sketching a stand that holds many pairs of eye glasses. There were too many tiny, overlapping details and I wasn’t really interested. Fortunately the optician arrived with my glasses so I stopped. When I got home, instead of leaving a partially messed up page I turned the page 90 degrees and added a quick sketch of my sunglasses (from memory) and then stuck myself in them.