Mulholland Twilight – Nibblefest
“Mulholland Twilight” 8 x 10 – oil on canvasboard
SOLD
The purpose of Ebay’s monthly Nibblefest is to generate interest and publicity for our works and the person with the most unique bids from different bidders is the winner. For this reason, it’s good to keep the price in a low range as long as possible because it encourages more nibbles. Of course, I’d love to see it sell for a good price at the close of auction, but in the beginning, small bids from a lot of different people is ideal. In fact, I’d love to see 15 + people bid on it in 50 cent increments.
I only take part in this activity once a month, so if you’ve been interested in owning one of my paintings, this is a great time to do it.
This painting – a view of the San Fernando Valley from Mulholland Drive – is even more vibrant in person. The sky is a blend of ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson, with accents of cerulean blue and cadmium red. It’s the sort of sunset that is all too rare because of our lack of clouds. But when they happen it can be magical. In the distance the lights were just beginning to come on, creating the kind of wild/urban scene that can only happen in LA.
Flint Canyon Trail – Daily Painting
“Flint Canyon Trail” – 9 x 12 oil on canvasboard
Graduations and reunions are completed (joyfully) and we are catching up after all the partying and celebrating. Here are our son and daughter, who will be having her own MBA graduation next year.
So, it was time for me to get back to painting, and new watercolors, oils and pastels will follow soon. This painting represents a portion of the Flint Canyon Trail which is part of a large loop of trails that goes through La Canada, Flintridge, where we live. The trail is most beautiful in early morning and late afternoon light (this was about 6 pm.) The canvas was toned with burnt sienna underneath which adds an overall glow as bits of it peek through here and there.
Descanso Camellia
“Descanso Camellia” – Approx 15 x 11″ – watercolor on paper
SOLD
This is probably the largest floral piece I’ve done so far – and I enjoyed the process very much. Essentially it’s no different from working small except I have to stand back more frequently and use larger brushes to avoid getting too many picky details.
Busy, busy. I don’t have time to write much right now – I’m up to my ears in framing and gathering materials for a new class I’ll be attending tomorrow. Plus, our son is graduating from UCLA on Saturday and we’re co-hosting a grad party for him and some of his roommates.
OK, back to work for me …
Peonies Plein Air
Plein Air Peonies – 11″ x 15″ (quarter sheet) Arches 140# watercolor paper
SOLD
Well, the show was a success in every way and I have lived to tell the tale. Kudos to Lori and her family for not only organizing the event but offering their home as our gallery and creating an atmosphere of conviviality and creativity. We all arrived an hour before the studio tour began to set up our easels and help with last minute details … but everything was in perfect order so there was little we needed to do. Tour guests began arriving promptly at 1 and continued throughout the afternoon with only a few lulls and many surges. The organizing committee asked if artists might have some sort of demo set up at their studios, and several of were happy to oblige, setting up our easels around a beautiful still life arrangement artfully presented by painter Carolyn Jean. I haven’t done very many floral still lives but I loved the challenge of these peonies – which we cannot grow in Southern California. These buxom blooms came from Whole Foods market, and I understand from my artpal Nan that Trader Joes is carrying them as well.
The light changed quite radically during the hour or so that I was painting these, but I tried to keep the memory of the glow even while they slipped into the shade of the umbrella and grapefruit tree. I invoked the muse that speaks to Charles Reid to please give me a hand with the looseness – that is to say, to please stay my hand if I should try to get too fussy. Because I paint landscapes more than arranged flowers, this experience has given me the incentive to do more painting out on my back patio this summer.
All in all, we had a good day. I sold this painting of the garden at Casita Del Arroyo
to a lovely collector, and Robin, Ginny, Carolyn, Louisa and others in our group had sales as well. It was an auspicious beginning. But the best part was being in the company of good painting friends, family and art lovers on a perfect late spring day. Assuming the stars all align correctly, I can hardly wait until we do it next year.
Blue Cove
“Blue Cove” 9 x 12 watercolor
A few things I was experimenting with: lost and found edges, limited color scheme, interlocking edges, oblique forms, use of reflections, using suggestive brushwork rather than painting every little leaf and bush, using strong value patterns and so on.
This afternoon I’m looking forward to a paintout at a local botanical garden with artpal Wendee!
Illo Friday – Citrus
“Twin Oranges” – 6 x 8 – oil on canvas panel, mounted on hardboard – SOLD
These small oranges were spotted at the Old Mill in San Marino, home of the California Art Club.
I loved the way they were shining in the sun, so reminiscent, to me, of the California I remember from my childhood when the northern end of the San Fernando Valley was still filled with orange groves, not strip malls.
This is my entry for this week’s Illustration Friday theme – “Citrus”
Arcadia – Fantasy Island House
“Queen Anne Cottage” 15″ x 11″ (quarter sheet) – SOLD
Today my art pal Wendee and I went to the LA Arboretum in Arcadia for some plein air sketching and painting. We found a shady relatively cool spot in the tropical lagoon area, made famous by the 70s anthology series “Fantasy Island”
(Alright, let’s just say it and get it out of our systems, shall we? “Da Plane, Da Plane.”)
I took some digipix of the work in progress this time. After doing a quick value sketch, I drew some light outlines on the paper of where I wanted the main features to go. In this picture I’ve already started putting in the trunk of the palm, which I knew would be the featured item. I’m using burnt sienna and a mauve to get that warm/cool feeling where the trunk turns from light to shade.
Next , I’m moving around the page with a big round brush, putting in some of the background colors, and making up quite a few also. I’ve done a lot of work on the palm, not only because it was fun but because the light was changing and I wanted to get it to some degree of completion so I could evaluate the values of other things in the picture.
At this point it was probably an hour and a half after I began, give or take a bit, and the morning sun had become overhead noontime sun. It was time to call it a day on location. I took the painting home to check the photo I had taken at the beginning of the day, and to decide where the reflections would go. Most of the hard work is done at this point – what remains are putting in the darkest darks, details and calligraphic brushstrokes.
Cobb Estate Cypresses
Cobb Estate Cypresses 5″ x 8″ – watercolor
The Cobb Estate in Pasadena is a wonderful resource for artist, hiker and nature lover (also dog walkers.)
These evergreens line the old driveway which is now crumbling slowly.
The plants were not my main interest here – it was the strong pattern of lights and darks created by the shapes of the italian-looking trees.
I can only imagine how stately they looked before the land was reclaimed by the chapparal.
This was painted with a limited palette of raw sienna, burnt sienna, prussian blue and mauve, with a swath of thalo blue for the sky wash.
The illusion of bright sunshine is all about value – the strong contrasts that happen during mid day when the noon sun washes out surfaces to white, and creates the deepest darkest shade.
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Cottage
“Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Cottage” 11 x 15″ 140 lb. paper
These past few days have been very busy, and I have not been painting quite as many pieces as usual, but I did spend quite a bit of time with this one on Sunday, experimenting with a variety of techniques and concepts to come up with what I hope is a pleasing composition.
This painting was inspired by a scene I saw last summer when visiting the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens. We walked down a path to a Japanese teahouse, and on the way back saw this view of a small cottage through the trees. I loved the contrast between the dazzling sun and the deep shade under the trees.
I’d like to highlight a few different things, for those readers who like to know details. I’m one of them, too. I like to get into the painter’s head when I can.
First off, I did a very light sketch on the paper with a 2H pencil. This was little more than the general shape of the trees, the roofline of the house, the shape of the steps area and the prominent foreground rocks.
I started painting in the upper left hand corner, painting the trees on dry paper with a juicy brush loaded with leaf green paint. Immediately, while the paint was still wet, I rinsed my brush and picked up some orange, and then some deeper green, letting them mix on the paper. I continued painting down the left side in this way, paying attention to variety of color and leaving some skyholes here and there.
Next, I put some initial light washes under the large foreground boulders, reserving a white edge for the sun highlight, then started at the top right and painted a solid medium green wash for the large mass of trees. Notice that I didn’t mirror the two tree shapes. The edge of the tree mass on the right is ragged, making use of the roughness of the paper with a drybrush technique.
When these layers were all dry, I went back in and glazed some other colors over them. Dark tones for the shadowed bushes on the left, and medium greens into the small bushes on the right. I started molding the shape of the rocks at this time, also, using a “palette” gray composed of the leftovers of other colors I’d been using. I put in the foreground color very loosely.
About this time I started laying in the first washes of the house, cool blues and lavenders to contrast with the warms of the foliage. I “saved” the whites of the roof and the tops of the steps to suggest the hot mid day sun.
When all of this was dry, I went back in to carve out detail in the shadows, model the different shapes of the rocks with a variety of neutral washes. I added some splatter to the foreground to suggest dry crumbling granite and sand.
Toward the end of the painting I added details of the windows and doors on the house, I “lifted out” the shapes of some bushes in the underbrush on the left, added deep crevices to the rocks and a few grasses and twigs here and there with a ‘rigger’ brush.
Finally I decided on a very light warm sky wash, instead of blue. I think that it adds to the feeling of sunny California warmth. Skies don’t have to be blue – they can be any color you like.
I used a number of different colors in this, including new gamboge, prussian blue, orange, mauve, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, leaf green and raw sienna.
Did you find this interesting? Helpful?
