Sometimes painting in a pretty park with views leads to painting surrounding suburbia (or is it “urbia”?) instead of the park. The scene I wanted to paint (a picnic area between big eucalyptus trees) was occupied by teenage boys smoking pot and I decided to leave them alone. I didn’t think they’d appreciate me setting up my easel and staring at them, and they were there first.
Fairmead Park in Richmond is a little, hidden gem of a park. It is almost at the top of a hill with interesting views, the sounds of birds and squirrels, and the wonderful scent of eucalyptus. I got a good start to the painting while I was there and took some photos so I could finish it at home. I tried to focus on values, color and getting the paint down and leaving it alone and I really like the way it turned out.
Here is the photo I used, taken from the edge of the park which goes up the hill behind where I stood:
Fairmead Park photo reference
So is this Suburbia or Urbia — it’s on the edge of a very urban area in the town of San Pablo but it looks pretty suburban, doesn’t it?
My plein air painting group held a workshop today at the beautiful Legion of Honor in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park at which Ed Terpening demonstrated. After an hour some people set up and started their own painting but I watched the full demo so had only enough time for this quick sketch. At the critique Ed pointed out the problem with the size of the guys in the foreground compared to the cars which made me laugh.
Ed is one of those rare artists who can paint while at the same time explaining the how, and why of what they’re doing. I learned so much! I’ve enjoyed following Ed’s blog, Life Plein Air for years and it was a real pleasure to meet him in person.
Afterwards I tried to walk over to the museum to see the Impressionists in Paris show (wonderful!) but was prevented by this craziness:
There were about a hundred noisy, smoky mopeds, coming up the hill and then circling around and around, more and more of them. Finally they left and I made it across the street and directly to the museum’s café for a much-needed latte. While I sipped I sketched the view out the cafe’s french doors (except they didn’t have Ed’s name above them):
Sketch under my notes about the workshop in journal
I took notes during the demo on a page in my journal that had an unfinished sketch done with green pen which is what that green mark is under Ed’s name.
Apparently the Legion of Honor is a place people go to take wedding and Quinciaños photos (even though their ceremonies weren’t actually held there). I noticed five different groups being photographed and took my own photos of a few. Since I used a zoom lens you don’t see the tourists and museum goers that were all around them:
Wedding group #1, So formal and seriousWedding Group #2: Flower GirlsQuincianera and her court of honor getting ready for photos
The Quinciañera is a Latin American tradition for celebrating a girl’s 15th birthday. Formerly a religious celebration, it has become an obscenely expensive event that can match weddings in cost and extravagance, including ball gowns, banquets, limos, huge parties, photographers, bands and more. I wish they’d save their money for college.
After their photos they left in a huge stretch limo as long as a bus but made out of a Hummer.
What is he thinking?
Nobody looked like they were enjoying themselves much in any of the groups. Except maybe the photographers, but they were getting paid to do their art.
Bleecker and Sullivan Streets, New York; Oil on Panel, 8"x10"
When I saw that this month’s Virtual Paintout was taking place in Manhattan, I wanted to paint the Lower East Side tenement where I lived when I made my big move to New York City from San Diego, California at the age of naive and tender age of 19, chasing my dreams.
I couldn’t find the building where I lived on East 13th Street between Avenue A and B (possibly torn down and replaced by a small community garden) using Google Street View but I could see that now it’s fluffy with foliage and yuppified with yoga studios. There were no gardens or trees on East 13th Street when I lived there, just trash cans, junked cars and the occasional group of men playing dominoes on card tables in front of their storefront church downstairs or throwing dice on the corner by the drug store.
East 13th Street between Ave. A & B, 1969
Next I looked for my favorite Greenwich Village cafe back then: the historic Le Figaro Cafe (New York Times article) which survived 50 years before closing down in 2008. It had famously been the haunts of Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, Dave Van Ronk, and Jack Kerouac.
During that year in NYC, I visited Le Figaro weekly for a little taste of home: their California Burger contained actual lettuce and tomato, unlike all other NYC burgers that were just bun and meat. They also served great espresso that you could sip while playing chess or people watching. (Although to be honest, at 19 I was more interested in their ice cream floats than espresso.)
I couldn’t find Le Figaro so I painted the next corner, Bleecker and Sullivan, which interested me as a subject. It turns out I gave up looking too soon, because in writing this post I actually found the remains of Le Figaro on Google Street View:
When I arrived at Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline the sky was gray and cloudy but even in the fog the park had so many great views: a salt water lagoon, Mt. Tamalpais across the bay, a fishing pier, an abandoned ferry landing, beautiful trees, and across the road, a railroad museum and a squat yellow building that houses a motorcycle club.
Miller Knox thumbnail
I finally picked a spot and got started with the above thumbnail sketch. I set my ViewCatcher to 8×10 and looked through its “window” to choose the composition. Then I put the ViewCatcher on my sketchbook and traced around the inside of the window to outline a box in my journal of the same proportion. By the time I was ready to add watercolor to the thumbnail sketch most of the fog had lifted except over the hills, and the sun was shining.
After 2-hour plein air session, oil on panel
Above is how the painting looked when I brought it home. The composition needed work: the picture is evenly divided in half with 2 trees on left, 2 trees on right and an empty center. The lagoon and bay should have been different colors. Too bad I’d ignored my thumbnail once I started painting because it had a much better composition.
I tried to continue the painting from a photo but the photo didn’t match my memory of the colors and light, even after Photoshopping it (below). But it did at least offer some clues for fixing the composition, like adding the sailboats (duh!).
Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline photo
Maybe I should add in the little “No Swimming” sign (only putting it on the left side as I did in my thumbnail). What do you think?
Self Portrait with Sketchbooks and Tea, ink & watercolor
When I set up my old mirror to sketch the self-portrait I end each journal with, I could see my sketchbooks on the shelf behind me in the mirror, along with the cup of tea behind the mirror. When I finished the sketch I pasted this photo of my Lady Gaga Makeover on the opposite page:
Me with Lady Gaga Hair
I found Instyle’s Hollywood Makeover website when I was looking for new hairstyle ideas. You upload a photo of your face, line it up, and select a hairstyle (from a huge collection of celebrity photos) which then appears on your face. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time!
Once you select a hairstyle (and even change the hair color) you can choose face and eye makeup, creating a complete makeover, which I did. If you register on their site you can save and download your makeover photos and it’s all free.
Jennifer Garner Hair Makeover
I brought this more reasonable makeover photo to my hairdresser, who rolled her eyes since the original model (Jennifer Garner) has thick, straight hair and mine isn’t. But with the help of her scissors and blow dryer, I did get something close.
Of course now my hair has gone native again, back to curly, since that’s so much easier than trying to turn it into something it isn’t with gels and blow driers and clips and pins and staying out of the wind and fog.
If you try the makeover site, please share the results! Or at least enjoy the laugh!
Study for Kaiser Garden II, watercolor, 6.5" x 4.5"
There are still openings in my watercolor class starting Sunday, June 27; click here for all the information. Ok, business done, now on to the painting above, another study from photos I took at the Kaiser garden.
I learned the hard way to do a study first, after time and again putting hours, days or weeks into a painting that was doomed from the start.
No matter how skillful the painting technique is, if the composition is bad (the viewer’s eye goes to a bright corner and then right off the painting), or you’re trying to work from a photo that doesn’t have enough information, or your colors or values are uninteresting, the painting isn’t likely to succeed. Sketching exactly what you see is great fun, but sometimes nature requires editing to make it a painting.
What made me want to paint this scene was the water feature and the bird sculpture but when I looked at my photo I saw big problems with the composition:
Original photo, Kaiser garden
There is way too much going on, the two big succulent plants on the bottom left dominate, a big stem above them leads the eye out of the frame, and the composition seems divided right down the middle, vertically. You barely notice the water.
So I spent some time in Photoshop cropping, rearranging and revising things:
Revised Photo Reference, Kaiser Garden II
Before cropping off the left side, I cut out the bird, moved it to the right, tilted it and gave it legs. Then I darkened the remaining succulents on the left and bottom to use them as a frame for the water feature instead of competing with it. When I started sketching the composition in my journal I decided to get rid of the messy tree branches poking in from the right too.
Although Photoshop is great for preparing a photo reference, so are the scissors, glue, sketches and notes that I used pre-Photoshop. Along with learning Photoshop, I’m also trying to become a better photographer and compose more carefully. I can do that with my digital SLR because it has a viewfinder but my carry-everywhere little Panasonic doesn’t. In the bright sun it was impossible to see anything on the LCD screen, so I guess I’m lucky that I got something I could work from at all.
My notes for the painting are in my journal opposite the study, with reminders about colors and things that worked (or didn’t). I’ve transferred the drawing to the canvas and it’s just waiting for its turn at the easel. I have a feeling it’s really meant to be a watercolor, not an acrylic painting, so may do it both ways.
Kaiser Hospital Tulip painting study, watercolor, 4.5" x 6.5"
I accidentally arrived an hour early for a doctor’s appointment at one of Kaiser Oakland’s medical offices that has an amazing hidden garden. The building is an architectural treasure, built around a courtyard in 1912 by Julia Morgan as a hospital and home for unwed mothers (or so I’ve been told). Instead of reading old, germy magazines, I spent the hour in the courtyard sketching, wandering and taking photos.
After working out the composition and colors, I’ve got two paintings ready to start: a full-size watercolor sheet of the above image and a slightly smaller canvas of another garden scene.
Before starting a large painting I like to do a study first, getting to know the image more intimately, and experimenting with pigments and techniques so when I start the real painting I have a plan of action or at least a sense of direction.
Tulip study and notes for painting, journal spread
Since I only recently began experimenting with opaque watercolor pigments after years of using only transparents, I made some discoveries with this study and took notes as I worked. Here are a couple that might be of interest:
Opaque pigments (Cadmiums, Cerulean, Yellow Ochre) are great when putting down an area of strong color and leaving it (such as when painting in my journal). But they lift too easily when adding layers over them, and become thick and unattractive when trying to mix darks. As I learned in oil painting, darks/shadows are best when thin so they don’t draw attention to themselves with texture. Seems to be the case in watercolor as well: better to use staining, transparent darks that won’t lift or get thick. For the dark green areas in the painting I’ll use Sap Green with Sepia and vary with a bit of Indigo, Winsor Violet and/or Alizarin.
The Legion/Utrecht 100% rag watercolor paper I’m using in my journal lifts incredibly easily. This is great when you actually want to lift paint but not so good when you just want to soften an edge and a bunch of paint lifts off instead!
Here are the original reference photo and the Photoshopped version. As you can see I got rid of some distractions and changed the proportions a bit.
Original reference photo of tulip in gardenPhotoshopped tulip reference photo
Photoshop CS5 has some great new composition tools, such as “Content-Aware Fill” which I used to fill in the windows, white at top right corner and a tulip on the right margin. You just select and delete sections you want to replace and PS fills them with information from the surrounding area. I also narrowed the image to fit the proportions of the 22×30 watercolor paper using Content-Aware Scaling which preserves the proportions of the important stuff while squeezing in (or stretching) the other stuff.
Back to Real Me (if a bit squinty), ink and watercolor
Yesterday I was having a hard time with some issues and by the evening was full of negativity. I watched a little TV and tried to think of a way fix my rotten mood. Nothing sounded good until I had the idea to play dress up, take some photos and sketch myself as someone else, someone not in a bad mood.
Even though it was 9:00 at night, I put on a ton of makeup (which I rarely ever wear) including teal eye liner, blue eye shadow, maroon lipstick and as much blush as possible. I tied a turquoise bandana around my messy hair, put a pretty blouse over my ratty t-shirt and set my camera to shoot repeatedly. I posed the way I’d heard Usher on American Idol telling contestants to look through the camera as if they were connecting directly with their audience at home.
I set it to shoot again and pretended like I was on America’s Next Top Model, posing for a fancy photographer. Then I put the images up on the computer screen and sketched one from the screen and one from a mirror. Despite looking pleasant in the photos, my sketches looked as tortured and sad as I was feeling.
Tortured sketch (in mirror), Pretending sweetness (from photo)
Tonight, in a better mood, I did these two, the one on the right drawn with a brush. I still wasn’t satisfied that I’d done the final self portrait to end the book.
Starting to feel better sketches (from photo)
Finally, I put my hair in a ponytail and sketched myself again in a mirror (the sketch at the top of the post) which I like and now officially ends the previous journal.
And here’s one of the photos I used for the sketches.
Pretending to be cheery
Last night I was pretending to be cheery and now tonight I am. Was it the pretending that changed my mood or is it the weekend?
After waking up way too early and having loads of extra time before I needed to leave for my plain air painting session today, I somehow managed to get late anyway. When I finally got to our meeting place—Borges Ranch on the Shell Ridge Open Space in Walnut Creek—I decided to leave my easel and acrylics in the car and hike the ridge trail with my sketchbook, watercolor kit and camera.Then when I was heading back for the critique, I stopped at the barn and painted the quick sketch above.
Often when I’m plein air painting I’m jealous of all the people who are enjoying the day by hiking the hills instead of standing in one spot trying to capture all the abundant nature in two dimensions on a little piece of canvas. So this time I joined them and it was heavenly. After exploring for an hour or so I found a spot on the trail beside a large muddy pond where I sat and painted the picture below. It doesn’t make sense as a picture but when I look at it I can hear the buzzing bees (must have been a hive in a nearby tree), the birds chirping, and can feel the warm sun shining on me.
Warm sun, buzzing bees, a pond, a cyclist
This was the first sketch in my new journal with the Legion Multimedia paper. It’s a dream to sketch on; the pen slides right along. The paper is nicely sized and while it won’t take the abuse that Arches cold press will, it does hold up pretty well as long as you don’t try to do more than 2 or 3 layers. This slight limitation will hopefully me keep me moving on to the next sketch instead of overworking one to death.
After the critique (and my lunch) it was mealtime for the farm animals and I couldn’t get any of their attention. This guy looked at me like I was really annoying.
Borges sheep chowing down
Only the rooster seemed to have places to go and things to do.
…but my son Robin did instead. And he took wonderful, soulful photos that he shared with me. So of course I had to sketch them, starting with this otter whose expression really struck me. It came out a little different in each sketch.
Worried Otter, drawn with icky Pigma Brush Pen
I finally threw away the Pigma Brush Pen I used for this sketch. The point seemed to fray on first use and only got worse. The Pitt Artist Brush Pens seem to hold up better.
Perplexed Otter, Sepia & Black Pitt Artist Pens
I think this one is my favorite either because of his expression (why am I assuming it’s a boy?) or because the drawing reminds me of a series of children’s books I used to read to my sons when they were little, about a little badger named Francis.
And here is Robin’s original photo:
Otter, photo by Robin Bouc
I wonder what this cute little guy was thinking. Doesn’t this just call for a caption? What would it be?
Jana Bouc, Artist 