Tag: Photos

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Drawing Oil Painting Painting Photos Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Painting a Painted Pumpkin Until….Ewww!

Painted Pumpkin Painted, oil on panel, 8x10"
Painted Pumpkin Painted, oil on Gessobord panel, 8x10"

On Halloween I got inspired to paint a pumpkin but the only pumpkins left in the grocery store were huge warty-looking ones and two smaller ones with cartoon faces painted on them. I chose one of the painted pumpkins whose paint was peeling and asked if they’d sell it at ordinary pumpkin price, which they did.

I took it home, washed off the silly face, cut it open and set it on a black plate on my drawing table to make a preliminary sketch:

Halloween Pumpkin sketch, ink on paper
Halloween Pumpkin sketch, ink on paper

Then I set it up on the table by my easel inside a box made of black foam core with a strong light shining in from one side. I sketched the composition on my Gessobord panel, mixed some colors, and began painting with the intention to work quickly and directly.

But after three hours I gave up and scraped off the panel. I just couldn’t get a clean orange and everything looked chalky, horrible and dead. I emailed my friend Kathryn Law, a brilliant painter who gave me some excellent advice about mixing colors (including that orange was tough to mix from cadmium yellow and red with oils), along with inspiration and encouragement.

The next day, unwilling to accept defeat, I attempted the painting again, this time draping an olive-green cloth over the black foam core. Everything went so much more easily; what had felt like work the day before felt like fun. At Kathryn’s suggestion I used larger brushes and was more generous with the paint. I tried to put down a stroke and leave it. I kept in mind the way I enjoy sketching, and tried to keep that sense of adventure and freedom. I finished the painting and went to bed happy.

The next day I saw a few things I wanted to fix but had to go to work. I left my pumpkin still life set up for three days while I went to work. When I came back to the pumpkin today it was smelly, collapsing, gross and growing stuff:

Gross pumpkin photo
Gross pumpkin photo

Ewww! Tossed the pumpkin in the recycling bin and washed the plate. I guess the painting will have to be done as is, though I’m tempted to work on the plate a bit to try to make it look shiny.

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

Fairmead Park, Richmond, Suburban (?) Oil Painting

View from Fairmead Park, Oil on Gessobord, 9x12"
View from Fairmead Park, Oil on board, 9x12"

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
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?

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Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Painting People Photos Places Sketchbook Pages

Workshop, Weddings, Wheels at Legion of Honor, SF

Legion of Honor, SF, Ink & watercolor
Legion of Honor, SF, Ink & watercolor

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):

Cafe view under my notes about the workshop in sketchbook
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 #1, Very serious and stoic
Wedding group #1, So formal and serious
Getting the flower girls ready
Wedding Group #2: Flower Girls
The Quincianera and her court of honor
Quincianera 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.

Priceless expression (great hat, too)
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.

Categories
Building Landscape Life in general Oil Painting Painting Photos Places Virtual Paint-Out

Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, NY (Virtual Paintout)

Bleecker and Sullivan Streets, New York; Oil on Panel, 8"x10"
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
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:

Le Figaro Cafe
Le Figaro Cafe, Bleecker and MacDougal, NYC
Categories
Art theory Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos Places Plein Air Pt. Richmond Sketchbook Pages

Lifting Fog: Painting at Miller/Knox Park

Lifting Fog, oil on canvas panel, 8x10" (plein air painting finished in studio)
Lifting Fog, oil on canvas panel, 8×10″ (Sold) 

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
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
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
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?

Categories
Drawing Faces Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting People Photos Self Portrait Sketchbook Pages

Self-Portrait and My Lady Gaga Makeover

Self Portrait with Sketchbooks and Tea, ink & watercolor
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
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
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!

Categories
Animals Art theory Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos Places Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Watercolor Study & Watercolor Class Openings

Study for Kaiser Garden II, watercolor, 6.5" x 4.5"
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
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
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.