Almost Sunset – Eaton Canyon Altadena California landscape oil painting
“Almost Sunset – Eaton Canyon”
16 x 20 inches
Oil painting on canvas
Eaton Canyon has been our local go-to place for walking and hiking ever since our children were little.
We remember the wildflower walkabouts in spring, the crisp air in fall. And oh, the beautiful oaks.
We’re seen some old oaks fall away and be replaced by new saplings, the circle of life.
I think it’s most beautiful at sunset when the warm western glow lights up the San Gabriels.
See more of my paintings on my website.
California Landscape Oil Painting – Claremont Wilderness Park Trail
Claremont Wilderness Park Trail
(featuring Potato Mountain – and the Angeles National Forest – San Gabriel Mountains)
18 x 24 oil on canvas
If you have a question or or would like to find out if this painting is still available for sale…..
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This painting is brand new and features a viewpoint from a trail in the Claremont Wilderness Park. Depending upon which way you’re hiking on the trail, it’s either the beginning or end of a loop that goes way up into the mountains. On the day I was there and did a small on-location study, there were spectacular clouds in the sky, making interesting shadows and bright spots on the ground – a painter’s delight.
I’m taking the painting tomorrow to the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens show in Claremont for their annual juried Art in the Garden show. This will be my third year participating in this wonderful location. I would love to see you there, so if you plan to attend, please email me and I will send you a flyer you can print out – good for free admission this weekend only.
Please make a calendar date: Next weekend, June 12-13, I will be painting in my home territory, Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge during a 2-day Art in the Garden event. Look for a number of painters painting around the pavilion in the International Rosarium. I will be bringing a selection of works for sale also.
More later … now I’m back to getting my last-minute framing done.
La Canada Angeles Crest Landscape Oil Painting – Karen Winters
“Snow on the Crest”
16 x 20 oil on canvas
This is a view into the Crescenta Canada Valley from a high road in Flintridge, near the Sacred Heart Academy. The 210 freeway can be seen on the left as it passes the upper Arroyo Seco. The mountains are the San Gabriel range. Last winter, a snowstorm left a dusting of snow on the Angeles Crest Forest. It only lasted a few days but I had the opportunity to take some early morning pictures of this rare occurrence. By the next day, most of the snow had vanished.
Now that the temperatures have reached the high 90s locally, I thought it was a good time to think about something cool.
Tumbling Down – Karen Winters daily painting
“Tumbling Down” – 10 x 14 – mixed media on watercolor paper (wc and acrylic)
Last night, after I decided to stop working on an oil painting (for the moment), I took out a watercolor pad and thought I’d experiment with some of what I heard Jerry Stitt talking about – painting what things are “doing” rather than literally what they look like. This was the result.
I started with big bold washes with a wide hake (goat hair?) brush, and then started layering with other watercolor washes. I dropped thick paint into wet areas and let it run. I used the edge of a flat brush to sculpt some of the rocks. Dry brush was added here and there for foliage. Most of the white of the waterfall was the reserved white of the paper.
After the watercolor was dry, I went back in with acrylic (both diluted and full strength) to add more crevices to the rocks and to add to the spray effect over dark rocks. Knowing that I was going to include acrylic, I didn’t use any masking.
I only vaguely used a reference photo as a starting point and to understand the flow of the cascade. Most of the rocks were made up as the paint did its own thing and I needed to respond to it. That’s something else that I found fascinating from Stitt’s demo – he did his paintings completely out of his head based on his response to a very quick gestural drawing and what the paint was doing on the paper. Stitt has been painting for so many years that his knowledge of land forms is vast, so in a sense he’s relying on an internal reference library and a near photographic memory. But what he says is true. At a certain point in a particular painting you need to make the painting work and forget trying to match a scene “out there” in reality. I observed the same ability with watercolorist Barbara Nechis who invented landscapes as she painted … again building upon years of experience as a painter and observer of nature. This is yet another reason to keep a sketchbook and draw nature wherever you go. By this simple act you are committing nature to memory.
Sheltering Sycamore
“Sheltering Sycamore” 8 x 10 oil
SOLD
This is the last of my Descanso demonstration paintings, which I finished yesterday afternoon. It is a local painting of a clump of sycamore trees only a mile or so from our house at the edge of the Angeles National Forest. I have painted this cluster before – and they are beautiful in every season. Some autumns, the sycamores turn a range of colors from red orange to green gold to yellow. In other years the leaves simply turn a dusty brown and fade. I suppose that it depends upon what the weather is doing – or perhaps it’s a matter of drought and what kind of summer it was.
I will be at the gallery most of the day today, Thursday, and tomorrow a new group of painters will arrive. Then, it will be time to turn my attention back to some larger paintings and framing some of the juried works for upcoming shows.
