Painting a Day – Japanese persimmon
4″ x 4″ pastel on paper
SOLD
Last Sunday we went to our local farmers’ market and I picked up quite a few unusual fruits from specialized growers. This little fellow is called a Japanese persimmon – a Fuyu, to be more precise. Unlike many other persimmons, it is short and round and looks a little bit like a tomato. I don’t know when it will get sweet but in the meantime I’m going to have a good time painting and drawing it. The oranges, golds and greens in the skin were a powerful lure.
Occasionally I’ll add a bit of pastel to a watercolor to enhance certain colors, but I haven’t done too many lately.
The Tujunga sunset (below) was my first attempt to get back into it (in June) after far too many years.
The good thing about letting your pastels sit around for a awhile is that they don’t dry up, fade or show any signs or deterioration. The bad thing is that your fingers get rusty. But that’s what learning’s all about, and I’m enjoying the process.
Have you revisited a medium that you put aside long ago? What did it feel like when you started up again? Vaguely familiar like riding a bike? Or strange and foreign?
Painting a Day – Country Roads
Original watercolor – 10.5″ x 7″ – available
Although much of Santa Barbara is cosmopolitan and sophisticated, there are some rural areas where abandoned roads still sprawl over undeveloped land in the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains.
I wanted to climb over that little wire fence and see where the forgotten path would lead, but I didn’t really want to get stopped or questioned for trespassing. Now that the heat of summer has passed, it’s the very best time of year for getting out and overindulging in the beauty of nature. Within six weeks, the first of the trees will start changing in Southern California and the skies will be a little bluer as the heat haze becomes a memory, blown away by cooler autumn gusts.
It’s a dangerous time for fire, as well, and I hope that this season we don’t see the firestorms that have ravaged parts of our local mountains in previous years.
Do you have a favorite season for getting out and drawing, painting, or photographing nature? Is it this one?
