Tag: Plein Air

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Flower Art Gardening Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Plants Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Tilden Botanical Garden

Serpentine Cone Flower

Serpentine Cone Flower
Ink and watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
Click here to see enlarged

Today I went to Berkeley’s Tilden Park Botanical Gardens with Richard. It’s a lovely, serene place filled with California native plants and trees from giant redwoods to wildflowers. He hiked around the hills, fields, bridges, creeks and wooded areas, enjoying the quiet breeze and birdsong. Most of the flowering plants had already done their big blooming in the spring but these coneflowers grabbed my interest so I sat down on the grass and did this quick sketch while Richard, a photographer, took close up shots of flowers.

Then we decided to move on to Blake Gardens. Richard had never been there and there were many parts of the estate I’d never explored, so we hiked all around there too, finding amazing jewels of nature and design at every turn. We took lots of photos but since time was limited and we wanted to see everything, I didn’t do another drawing. Now that I’ve seen the full scope of what’s there I think it holds promise for unlimited painting opportunities.

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Flower Art Plein Air Watercolor

Irises Plein Air

Irises

Watercolor on Arches paper 12 x 9″ (scanner cut off inch on bottom)
To enlarge, click image, select “All Sizes”

I work from home Monday mornings and when we finished a conference call at 12:30 my boss said, “Bye Jana, now go have a nice afternoon painting.” So I did! But first I had lunch in my sunny backyard on the chaise lounge, eating a salad and reading a book on painting. Then I dozed off and had a lovely outdoor nap (I’m so much happier since I gave up being a workaholic!). When I woke up, I made a cup of coffee and got out my wonderful Valpod watercolor easel which I set up on the sidewalk in front of this bunch of irises in full bloom in my front yard.

irises in progress

Stopping point before moving indoors

I drew the irises in pencil and then quickly started painting since the sun had moved and the shade was quickly moving over the flowers. The roses behind them were already dark in shade. I got as far as the picture above before moving indoors for dinner. After dinner I worked a little more on darkening the background and negative painting around the stems and leaves, trying to suggest lots of foliage without drawing it all.

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Every Day Matters Flower Art Gardening Plants Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Iris in my Garden (EDM: Fresh)

Iris in my garden

Watercolor in Canson 7 x 10″ Sketchbook
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

I’d planned to spend my painting time in the studio today but it was too gorgeous outside to stay indoors. So I pulled up a lawn chair and painted this iris in my front yard. I drew it in pencil and then added watercolor,  all the while listening to birds chirping (and the sounds of the nearby freeway which I pretend is the ocean), with the sun shining, the bees buzzing around me and the wind blowing my hair.

These irises are heart-breakingly beautiful. They are so fragile and temporary. One day they’re proudly blooming, thrusting their strong, wild purpleness proudly up to the sun and the next day they’ve turned to a little wisp of gelatinous film, drooping sadly from their stalk. I’m glad I was able to sit with this one for an hour and enjoy it’s beauty before it’s gone.

Categories
Outdoors/Landscape Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Cerrito Creek

Cerrito Creek 2

Ink & watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook
To enlarge, click images, select All Sizes

Cerrito Creek 1

Today was a glorious sunny day — perfect for a mid-day walk to Peets Coffee. This is Cerrito Creek, a little urban greenway hidden away a block from Peets beside the California Orientation Center for the Blind and Albany Hill in El Cerrito. I got my coffee beans and an iced decaf latte and did these two little sketches.

It was a lovely spot except for the smell of dog pee along the fence I was using as an easel/table. This path must be a favorite dog walking spot. It’s funny how sensory experiences get embedded in a painting done outdoors — souds, wind, sun, friendly people…they’re all in there.

Tonight I tried adding a little Aquacover (a white-out designed for watercolor paper) mixed with some yellow paint to try to put back the falling water and reflections. I’m not sure it worked. Here it is before I added the splashy water.

Cerrito Creek 1

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Plein Air Puerto Vallarta Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

More Puerto Vallarta sketches

PV-Fountain
PV-Fountain-white background

Watercolor in Canson 7×10 watercolor book
To enlarge images, click them and select All Sizes

PV-Grocery

Ink and watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook

I struggled with painting this fountain that was outside our classroom. There was no direct light because it was in a roofed courtyard and there was a bright fuschia pink wall behind it and a bright yellow-green wall on its right side. Before I painted the background, the fountain looked great. Then I painted the wall bright pink and it overpowered the fountain so then I tried painting over it which didn’t work so I washed off as much of the pink as would come off using a damp brush, and then painted over it with yellow ochre. The second version is with the background removed in Photoshop, cropped and lightened a bit to try to recreate how it looked originally. Which do you prefer?

One good thing that came of doing the drawing was that I recalled a tip I’d heard somewhere: to make a cylindrical object like a fountain or a vase appear symmetrical: draw a light vertical line down the center first and then measure each section (measuring its width on one side by sliding your thumb down the pencil to mark the size) and then comparing it to the other side or just eyeballing it.

I drew the grocery picture in the supermarket a couple doors down from my hotel. A workshop friend and I were there to get photos developed at the in-store 1-hour photo booth (thank goodness for my Spanish–without it they would have printed all 104 pictures on my SD card instead of the 10 I wanted–I had to talk them through how to do it on their machine since there was no self-serve). We stood in the produce aisle with our pens, sketchbooks and little paint kits drawing and painting as fast as we could while shoppers and employees ignored us. The worker was standing on a raised rail changing the prices. Half of the price tags listed comparisons to Walmart prices to show shoppers they were getting a good deal. It’s not the charming street market I hoped to sketch, but they did have great fresh rolls in the bakery and organic lettuce and rotisserie chickens that I used for lunch sandwiches all week.

Categories
Art theory Outdoors/Landscape Plein Air Puerto Vallarta Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Color Chords

PV-Fountain2

Ink drawing with watercolor in Canson 7×10 watercolor sketchbook
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

I left the workshop to go sketch outside behind the classroom, sitting on a little brick wall along a road with trucks and taxis constantly parading past. This dry fountain was going to be torn down soon as it’s in one of the ubiquitous construction areas.

(More from my workshop with Judy Morris in Puerto Vallarta last week).

COLOR CHORDS:

This is important to me because I can get so involved in rendering exactly what I see that I forget to take artistic license to create a more pleasing color scheme rather than painting whatever colors are present. A color chord is like a chord in music–a selection of color notes that harmonize or are exciting together.

  • Most paintings accepted into the American Watercolor Society annual show have a limited palette
  • Avoid too many colors or abrasive color combinations by making a “color chord” plan before painting
  • Use a LIMITED PALETTE with any combination of the 3 primaries (a yellow including yellow ochre, a red and a blue); a complementary color scheme (2 colors opposite each other on the color wheel) or an analagous color scheme (neighboring colors on the color wheel); or· 1 color and sepia OR
  • Use a BORROWED COLOR SCHEME: Collect samples of from good photos, postcards, or other paintings color schemes you like and keep them in a folder. Select a color scheme from these samples to select a color chord for your painting.

 

Categories
Life in general Plein Air Watercolor

Hasta la vista

easel1

I’m off to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a week of painting, swimming, reading and siestas. I’ll be joining Judy Morris for her watercolor workshops from 9-2 in our courtyard patio “studio” and on plein air painting trips around the area. The trip is sponsored by Flying Colors Art Workshops.

The picture above is my new watercolor easel recommended by Judy. Here’s what she said about it:

“Some of you may be interested in the PERFECT plein air easel. I have one! I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!! Look at Valpod Artist Easel website to see it. Norm Kramer in Idaho makes them (Valpod Artist Easels – Telephone: 208-522-8677 in Idaho). I prefer the #U8000 model. I take the tripod, shelf, plastic cups that are provided, and the small (1/4 sheet size) board. Fits in my suitcase perfectly!”

I’ll let you know how I liked it. I normally use a Winsor Newton Bristol watercolor portable easel and make a shelf by clipping a flat old palette on top of my old lady shopping cart that I drag my plein air supplies around in. I can’t bring that cart with me so will have to carry everything, which I’m not thrilled about. I may just use my watercolor sketchbook when we go off site. I’m bringing a Canson Montval Field Watercolor notebook (140 pound watercolor paper 7×10″), small Moleskine watercolor notebook and sketchbook in my backpack on the plane, and maybe a few others, depending on room.

Well, it’s already 9:30 PM and I haven’t finished packing yet and I’m leaving in the AM so I better say Adios now.

I’ll be back next weekend.

Categories
Animals Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

At the Dog Park

Watercolor and Micron Pigma Brush Pen in Raffine 6″x9″ Sketchbook

Yesterday I’d planned to spend the day in the studio but it was such a surprisingly nice day that I decided to go sketch at the dog park which is only about a mile from my house. Pt. Isabelle is a 23 acre park where dogs are allowed off leash and can run, swim and play. It’s on the S. F. Bay with stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge. I sat on a bench along the path and watched the passing parade of canines and their owners. One very large dog turned out to be a miniature horse, the size of a Great Dane, and she caused quite a stir. I overheard her owner telling the gathering crowd that they take her places in their mini-van and that she sleeps outdoors but comes in the house and hangs out with the family. That brought back fond memories of my favorite childhood book, Pippi Longstocking, whose horse lived with her indoors.

Every dog that passed by took a turn peeing on the post beside my bench but none would hold still long enough for me to draw them. I filled several pages with partial dogs and then switched to doggie stick figures, just trying to capture their gestures and shapes. It was a hoot eavesdropping on the conversations I heard with owners and their dogs: “Now, Isis, I told you not to do that…stop it now Isis or else you’ll be sorry when you get home, Isis, stay, no, stay, I told you to stay….” It reminded me of the Far Side cartoon that goes:

What you say: Oh Ginger, that was a bad thing. You’re a bad, bad dog, Ginger.
What a dog hears: Blah Ginger, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah, Ginger.

After I’d finished the second picture it got really windy and foggy so I headed home, happy to be in the studio having enjoyed what may have been the last nice day before winter hit. Today it rained all day.

Categories
Outdoors/Landscape Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Painting Palms in the Dark

Painting Palms in the Dark

Ink and watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
(To enlarge, click image and select “All Sizes”)

The other night Michael and I were driving down Santa Fe Ave near Gilman in Berkeley and he pointed out these two palm trees that were lit up and glowing in the dark. Tonight I returned to paint them in the dark from the front seat of my car. I couldn’t exactly see what I was doing or what colors I was getting. The light in my car was fairly dim and my paper looked brownish instead of white. I was excited to get home and see it under the light, where it looks completely different. I’m really starting to enjoy letting things just happen with my art instead of trying to control it so much. That’s a wall  covered with ivy in front of some small trees in front of the palms, in case you can’t tell.

I’ve been noticing palm trees lately and wondering….why do they exist? Why did they evolve to be so tall and skinny, with the leaves/fronds and fruit up so high up?

Categories
Outdoors/Landscape Plein Air Watercolor

Blake Garden Pagoda & Art Show

Blake Garden Pagoda

Watercolor and Ink on 9×12 Arches watercolor paper
(To enlarge, click image, select “All Sizes”)

I did this plein air painting on Monday afternoon at Blake Gardens. I got there 90 minutes before closing with a plan to paint the redwoods and creek area (just behind this little pagoda fountain). Unfortunately, landscape architecture students from U.C. Berkeley (the gardens belong to the University) had been allowed to do “art installations” and the creek had been covered with large white posterboards with yellow tape stuck here and there. (Is this art?) I had to quickly pick a spot to paint so settled for this fountain that was brightly lit on the edges by the setting sun at first. I painted without much drawing and then added the ink, using a non-permanent Pentel ink brush pen. I softened and bled the ink with a little water here and there.

Tonight my painting group met at the California Watercolor Association’s National Show held in downtown San Francisco’s Academy of Art gallery. There were a few stunning pieces, but the majority were disappointing. Someone was smoking cigarettes near the door and the gallery smelled horribly of cigarettes and was hot and stuffy so we headed over to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art three blocks away for a delicious dinner in the cafe and a visit to some “real” art (What makes something “real art?”).

I enjoyed seeing some Matisse paintings and sculpture on display that he made in the period I’m now reading about in the two volume, 1200 page biography, The Unknown Matisse and Matisse the Master. Then we saw an absolutely thrilling show of enormous sculptural paintings by German artist Anselm Kiefer. The scale, perspective, brilliance and 3-dimensionality of the work was breathtaking.

While we dined and looked at art we had many thought-provoking conversations about art, artists, showing, painting, and teaching. I’d love to share them with you but I’m falling asleep standing up (my computer is on a standing-height work table) so it will have to wait.