marsh – Jana Bouc, Artist

View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #1, ink & watercolor, 6x8" — View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #1, ink & watercolor, 6×8″

Very near my home is Pt. Isabel Regional Shoreline, with the world’s largest and most beautiful dog park. It is situated on the San Francisco Bay directly in line with the Golden Gate Bridge. There are views of San Francisco, wetland marshes and the East Bay hills looking east. I love dogs and don’t have one so I often go down there to walk the trails and enjoy other people’s dogs.

In the sketch above, I stood on the wooden bridge over the marsh and tried to capture everything, the marsh, the freeway, the buildings behind it and the hills beyond. Too much, really, for a small 8×6 sketchbook.

View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #2, ink & watercolor, 6x8" — View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #2, ink & watercolor, 6×8″

On my next visit it was extremely windy and I almost lost my sketchbook and a brush over the top of the wooden bridge rail I was using for a table. The light wasn’t very interesting, very flat with no shadows.

View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #3, ink & watercolor, 6x8" — View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #3, ink & watercolor, 6×8″

On the third visit the tide was in and the area in the first two sketches was mostly underwater so I turned to face west with San Francisco and the bridges in the distance.

I don’t feel that I did the scene justice in any of these sketches and hesitated posting them, but will return again and keep trying until I’m happier with the result.

Dry Wetlands: Where’s the water?

Shollenberger Wetlands, 12x9", Oil on panel (click image to enlarge) — Dry wetlands sketch, 12x9", Oil on panel (click image to enlarge)

Shollenberger Park is normally a watery paradise where you see swans, herons, egrets, pelicans, geese, turtles, frogs, lizards and the occasional harmless snake. But when I arrived there this morning with Camille Przewodek’s class, we were surprised to find cracked dry soil where the watery marsh used to be. Camille said she’d been painting there for years and had never seen it dry before. You can see many of her marsh paintings on her website here.

She set up for her demo in the hot sun, on land that used to be under water. Seeing her paint is like watching a magician, the way she creates the illusion of space, depth, atmosphere, weather, even time of day, all done with color relationships.

The smell from the dried up marsh was making me nauseous but nothing phases Camille when she’s painting. She never complains, whether it’s hot or freezing, windy or smelly; she just gets in the zone and paints. Her students know better than to whine about weather or anything else; or as one student pointed out:

“It’s called ‘PLEIN Air’ NOT ‘Complain Air’!”

About the paintings:
Both of these 1 to 2 hour plein air sketches were done at the marsh, trying to work on getting the big shapes and color relationships. I think my easel must not have been level today; the horizon seems to be slanting downhill on today’s sketch above.

Shollenberger Wetlands sketch, 12x9", oil on panel (click image to enlarge)

When I got home I tried to find out what happened to the water at Shollenberger but couldn’t find anything online. I did learn some interesting things about wetlands and what a valuable and important resource they are on the Petaluma Wetlands site.

I know we’re having a drought in California, but I don’t see how such a large body of water could dry up that quickly from being full just a few weeks ago.

I hope all the birds and fish and froggies are OK. If you know what’s going, please do tell!