Tag: Plein Air

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Drawing Flower Art Gardening Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Westbrae Nursery Buddhas

Westbrae Nursery Buddha

Micron pigma ink pen, watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook
(Click image, select “All Sizes” to enlarge)
(This was Monday’s post–I thought I’d clicked “Publish” but when there were no comments on it at all, I checked and discovered I had never actually put it on line….oops).

After working this morning I rode my bike into Berkeley this afternoon to do some errands. Last time I drove down Gilman I noticed that Westbrae Nursery had a bunch of Buddhas on display so after I finished my unshopping at REI (returning a clip-on umbrella that I thought would work for plein air painting but wouldn’t clip onto my easel) I rode over to the nursery.

I discovered that my new bike seat worked perfectly as a table for my teeny Winsor & Newton watercolor field kit. I stood with my bike just outside the nursery entrance to draw and paint this. One of the workers stopped by between delivery bags of manure and big plants to people’s cars. His comments: “Are you painting?” “Don’t you get tired standing?” “Wow you’re fast!”

Today was warm and sunny but by the time I started for home, the fog and wind had returned. Having not carried a jacket (a foolish mistake in the Bay Area), I had a chilly downhill ride home.

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Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Cloudy Skies – First Rain

Clouds1

Watercolor in Raffine sketchbook
(Click image, select “All Sizes” to enlarge)

It rained last night and this morning for the first time since winter. Our staff meeting ended at 4:00 and I was back to my neighborhood by 5:00 which was a treat, since I usually don’t get home from work until 7:00 and it’s almost dark by then. The bright sky was full of dramatic clouds, so instead of heading directly home I drove to the top of Albany Hill on Solano Ave. I painted these two quickies there, standing in the street behind my parked Toyota RAV4, using the painting gear I keep in the car.

Clouds2

Watercolor in Raffine sketchbook
(Click image, select “All Sizes” to enlarge)

I noticed there was a full moon when the sun went down. Maybe that’s what all the craziness was about downtown yesterday when I said I wish there was an iPod for the eyes so you could see beautiful things instead of ugly urban grit. Tami cleverly quipped that an “eye-pod” would be great. And then today I read this in David Pogue’s New York Times technology column:

“Apple’s rep gave a little talk that focused on iPod accessories. One of them looked like a pair of skinny wraparound sunglasses that displays your video iPod’s TV shows and movies on a virtual big screen that floats in the center of your vision. What’s cool is that you can still see–by looking around the TV set on either side. Hard to explain, but really neat.”

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Outdoors/Landscape Plein Air Watercolor

Blake Gardens – Trees & Yuppies

Blake Garden Trees

Watercolor painted en plein air at Blake Gardens on Arches 9×12 watercolor block

This afternoon the weather was gorgeous and knowing that plein air painting time will soon be over (at least for wimps like me who hate being cold) I grabbed the opportunity to go paint at Blake Gardens. I love this area of the garden, with the rows of trees and reflecting pond. Unfortunately a professional photographer and a perfect little yuppie family were also using the area to take family portraits.

For the entire two hours I was there painting they were alternately posing for pictures and trying to keep their little son from falling apart as he became increasingly bored and tired of all the phoney posing together. They were all perfectly groomed, in matching blond hair, white shirts, khaki pants (father and son) and khaki skirt (mom). They enthusiastically worked on keeping little Griffin engaged (Dictionary: “Griffin: a fabulous beast with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion”) in silly songs, teddy bears, slinkies, hugs and tickles, snacks, bribes of lollipops later, and discussion about his favorite tools (he’s got a hardware fixation and prefers monkey wrenches to screwdrivers). They were a really nice, loving family but I had really been hoping for serene communing with nature, not yuppies.

By the time we all left when Blake Gardens closed at 4:30, I had a headache and they were moving on to another park for more pictures. I was happy with how the painting went today–there were many moments of enjoyment as I became more closely aquainted with these grand old trees and as the paint appeared on the paper in ways I liked.

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Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

View from Moeser Lane

moeser-lane-web.jpg
Click image to enlarge

I was driving down Moeser Lane on my way home from Blake Gardens and as usual was amazed by the view and had to pull over and paint it from the front seat of my car. Moeser Lane is a very steep street that heads straight uphill from my house (in the flatlands near the S.F. Bay) and ends at The Arlington in El Cerrito (which means “little hill”–hah!) . Moeser Lane has a colorful history, having once been a tramway carrying rock from a quarry located near the top of the hill.

Painted in watercolor on a Sennelier watercolor block sized 10″ by 4″ — perfect for such a widescreen landscape.

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Plein Air Watercolor

Blake Gardens, Kensington, CA

Blake Gardens

Painted on site in watercolor on 9 x 12 Arches watercolor block.

I finally got back up to Blake Gardens today with two hours before closing. My plein air painting supplies live in an old lady shopping cart in my car. I dragged that thing all around the Blake Gardens estate looking for a spot to paint that wouldn’t be too cold and windy as it was a foggy day in Kensington.

A woman taking photos stopped to see what I was doing. She’s an oil painter who paints there often so I asked for her advice. Landscape and plein air painting never really interested me until this year, and I’ve only begun exploring it. While it initially feels humbling, even embarassing, to allow myself to be a beginner and ask for help, it’s also very freeing.

She saw that I was doing pencil thumbnail sketches in a sketchbook to get started and she suggested using a Sharpie instead, blocking in the main shapes on a full page instead of doing thumbnails. She was right–that helped a lot. Then I did a quick pencil sketch on my watercolor block, picked up the biggest brush I’d brought–a 1″ flat (something I rarely use) and dug in and started painting.

The funny thing is that the scan has better contrast, value range and color saturation than the original. I’m going to make a printout of the scanned image, and using that as my reference, enhance the original painting to match the scanned version. It showed me how to make the painting better–isn’t that cool?!

So my moral dilemma is this: which is cheating more, to post the scan-enhanced version before changing the painting, or to change a plein air painting by working on it in the studio? I guess then it’s not a plein air painting anymore? What do you think?

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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.

Categories
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!

Categories
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.