Category: Plein Air

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Drawing Gardening Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sunday in Barbara’s Garden

Barbara-garden-web2

Barbara and I took a great hike in the North Berkeley hills this morning near her house, and looked at people’s gardens and interesting (and bizarre) architecture. When we got back, her garden was so glorious in the noontime sun that I had to postpone lunch and sit down and draw.

It’s overflowing with beautiful flowers and healthy vegetables: spiky cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes (those funny little orange things on the left that look like pumpkins in my picture), corn (at the back), and in the foreground, a huge “volunteer” butternut squash that she didn’t plant.

The weather was perfect, with the bright sun taking breaks behind the clouds so it wasn’t too hot or cold. Compared to my house near the freeway, her garden is so quiet, with only the lovely Sunday sounds of birds, “beneficial” garden insects, breezes on the wind chimes, a neighbor playing lovely violin and her dog Gertie stretching and yawning in the sun.

With the abundance and variety of vegetation and her mosaics and ceramic sculptures, there’s another painting just waiting to be made every few steps. Drawing the amazing leaves and tendrils on the squash plant would have been enough to make me happy, but I decided to try to capture the whole garden today and then come back again and again to paint her garden over the summer.

Micron Pigma, watercolor in WC Moleskine.

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Drawing Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Busby, Fiona and the bird

Fiona-Busby-Bird

I walked into the studio to decide whether to draw something new tonight or just post the little sketches I did this morning on public transit. The kitties ran ahead, leapt onto my drawing table and chair, looked out the window and started making little chuffing noises at the birds in the tree outside my window. We all watched the birds gathering nesting materials from the ground and popping back into the foliage for a few minutes. Then I snuck away, grabbed my sketchbook and a Sharpie, and standing behind them, quickly sketched them with lots of redrawing lines and scribbles. The perspective and proportions aren’t quite right but I got the scene down before their short attention spans led them on to other mischief. With Busby (the big tabby) practically sitting on my sketchbook watching the brush as I painted (but without swatting it, like he often does), I quickly added watercolor.

Now I can get in bed and start reading the two-volume biography of Matisse that arrived from Amazon today.

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Drawing Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Bay Trail Art

Today I rode my old bike (never did buy a new one) down to the Bay Trail and explored the Albany Bulb waterfront park where artists create sculptures from the driftwood and drift-trash that comes in from the Bay or was dumped there before it was a park. Oakland artist and author of a book about the art at the Bulb, Jason De Antonis and his friend Osha Neumann (a civil rights lawyer involved in preserving the park) were just putting the finishing touches on this dog sculpture and arbor (if you click to enlarge and look closely you’ll see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background). He also made this huge sculpture of a woman that greets you as you come over the hill on the path down to the water. It’s enormous–at least 3 times the height of a person.
Dog sculpure woman and dog Woman sculpture
I made several stops along the way to paint a bit of a huge fennel plant,

Fennel

a view of the bay with San Francisco in the distance,

Bay

and a view of the wetlands from a bridge along the trail.

Wetlands

They’re all quick watercolors (less than 10 minutes) done in my small watercolor Moleskine.

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Drawing Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Who Am I Supposed to Be?

Guard
When I was leaving Blake Gardens yesterday I spotted this life-sized statue guarding a gated entry to an enormous but otherwise uninteresting home just past the Carmelite Monastery down the road from Blake Gardens. Today I went up there to draw him in my sketchbook. It was cold, foggy and windy so after about an hour of drawing I took a photo and finished it from the photo at home. As usual I think I should have stopped sooner before it got overworked–I’ll learn someday.

I can’t figure out who he is supposed to be or why someone would want two of them (he had a twin on the other side of the rock wall. His outfit has lots of ribbons and bows–very fancy and rather feminine–maybe that’s why he needs this fierce warrior-like glare and helmet and sword. Actually, he was missing his sword and just had his hands in sword-holding position. I gave him his twin’s sword since he looked so silly without it–sort of like he was playing rock, scissors, paper. I also thought it was funny the way the ivy was growing between his legs.

If you know who he’s supposed to be, or have seen these statues and this property and know what it is, please tell me!

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Drawing Every Day Matters Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Reflecting Pool at Blake Gardens

blakegarden-2-web.jpg
Watercolor on Arches 9×12.

I returned to Blake Gardens today, much better equipped for painting outdoors and did this 2-hour sketch of the pond from a different angle. I brought my new lightweight Winsor Newton watercolor easel and put all of my supplies into my granny cart (one of those tall wheeled mesh carts that you usually see old ladies pulling to the grocery store. I’d bought it a year ago to use like a janitor’s rolling cart and pulled it around the house with my cleaning supplies hanging from it and a trash bag in the middle–now it can do double duty since I paint way more than I clean!). Setting up, I clamped a sheet of foamcore on top of the cart which turned it into a handy table beside the easel.

When I arrived I had a delicious picnic on the grass under the tall trees. My back got tired halfway through painting so I laid in the grass for a while and watched the sky like I used to love to do when I was a little girl.

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Drawing Every Day Matters Gardening Life in general Plein Air Watercolor

Plein Air Painting at Blake Gardens (EDM: Someplace New)

Blake Garden

Plein air painting done at Blake Gardens, the 11 acre botanical gardens and University of California President’s Residence in Kensington, CA. (Open to the public weekdays.)

The Everyday Matters challenge for this week was to go someplace new and paint it. I’d never been to Blake Gardens before and I’d never done a complete watercolor plein air painting before except little sketchbook pictures, so I went to Blake Gardens and did this painting on a 9×12 Arches watercolor block.This scan actually looks better than the original, which was a little washed out.

I’m very fond of working in my studio from my photographs, with excellent lighting, comfortable temperature, a stereo playing my favorite music or audio books, and a comfy window seat when I need to sit back with a cool drink from the nearby fridge and rest.

Plein air (outdoor) painting is different! It was very HOT out so I picked a spot in the shade, but as the sun moved it was soon shining directly in my face. My white paper was blinding me. I’d look up at the scene and could barely see it–all I could see was white. My paint kept drying too quickly and I’d brought a too-small brush which was making icky streaks. I had to give up on wet-in-wet painting entirely and had trouble mixing colors because they looked much brighter than they really were. I spent the first hour just doing thumbnails, trying to figure out which part of the scene to put in the picture. It’s much easier to compose a painting from a photo than looking at the wide world in person!

I’m glad I pushed myself to try something new and will go back again soon, with bigger brushes, an umbrella and better snacks.