California Home 1 – Daily Painting
California Home 1 – 15″ x 11″ watercolor on paper
SOLD
Can you tell I’m in the middle of a very experimental try-anything phase? Well, I am. I absolutely love the California school paintings of the 30s through 50s, as I’ve mentioned here before, so today I thought I’d try something in that style.
Last year, on a trip to Capistrano, I took this picture of a bougainvillea vine climbing over a wall onto what seemed to be a carport or something undefined. I liked the vine but I wanted it to be part of a larger scene – not just a big pink sprawling mass. I might still paint it again in oil or pastel, but that’s another story.
So, today, while letting the Alverno villa color study percolate in the back of my head, I took out my sketchbook and explored some other ways the vine could be part of an imaginary scene. I invented a cottage for the vine to crawl on, and made the fence lower so it could be seen.
This was one of several value sketches I did, mapping out different shapes that I thought might work.
I scanned that drawing and brought it into Photoshop CS, where I experimented with different colors in different layers. To make the fuchsia-red flowers pop I looked for a complement for the cottage roof – a blue-green. I picked analogous colors for the other trees and shrubs in the scene.
When I got it roughly sketched on the paper, I discovered that I had too much room to the right with nothing going on, so I drew in an old clothesline and tucked it behind a hedge because I didn’t want the fence to run full wide right off the page. And … I liked the allusion to an time before labor-saving devices, and the sun and breeze that it implies. I suspect that there are a couple of little kids playing with a floppy-eared dog in that back yard. Don’t you think? That shrubby background became a place to insert a couple of squabbling birds – geese or ducks, your guess.
So there’s the evolution of a California dream from a long-gone era and I hope you found the journey to its completion interesting. I’ll be putting this in my ebay store, tomorrow probably.
Flintridge Cottage
“Flintridge Cottage” – watercolor – 5.3″ x 7″
Every year our town has a spring garden tour of some of the nicest homes. I often take a camera along to get ideas for landscaping. And occasionally these gardens end up in my paintings, too. This ivy covered cottage is on the route of one of our daily walks. With manicured box hedges, rose bushes and perennial flowers, it looks like something out of a fairy tale.
Palos Verdes Ride –
Palos Verdes Ride – 13.75 x 9″ – watercolor on paper
$100 Purchase from the artist
A few weeks ago, when we went down to Wayfarer’s Chapel for our anniversary, we drove through the Palos Verdes peninsula and I took a few pictures from the car along the way. One of them featured some large eucalyptuses, which I can never pass up the chance to paint. Unfortunately, this area is “no parking” due to extreme landslide danger, so I was not able to get out and sketch. But that’s why I always carry a camera with me. When I got home and took a look at my picture, I saw that there were some riders emerging from the grove. I hadn’t noticed them at all during the drive-by.
If you live in the area , I think we just approaching Portugeuse Bend, coming up from San Pedro. (Googlemap link below.)
Magnolia Glow – Daily Painting
Magnolia Glow – 7 x 11″ watercolor. SOLD.
Although this painting is sold see more of my floral and botanical paintings here
Every year I wait for the magnolias to come into bloom at Descanso. The tulips burst open at the same time, which seems fitting. The downy buds thrust up, covered with a soft casing that seems like velvet or suede. Eventually it begins to show color. This is usually about the time that a rainstorm threatens to spoil the blooms. But, with luck, the tight buds will make it through the showers, to open fully on a warm day. From this tight urn-shaped form they will expand gracefully, the petals laying back in ecstasy. The colors are more subtle in the shade, but I like them best in early morning or very late afternoon, when a slanting ray causes the white of the petals to glow with a hot inner fire.
In this case, the flower was painted first, in general terms. Then the background was added to gauge the contrast. Finally, I went back and added the final color accents to the bloom. I rather like the trapped negative space between the stem and the leaf – it reminds me of certain art nouveau motifs.
Full Blown – Daily Painting
“Full Blown” 7″ x 11″ – watercolor on 140# paper
Available
It’s not too late for the camellia show at Descanso Gardens, if you’ve been putting it off. There are still plenty of big blossoms in every range of white red and pink, and the azaleas at their feet are dazzling as well. And the tulips are up!
I was a painting fool this weekend. The more I painted the more I wanted to paint. I had some red paint left over from the tomatoes, and rather than see it go to waste I looked around through my recent flower files and found this camellia blossom, caught in the brilliant late afternoon sunlight. I can still imagine it hanging on the tree, moving slightly in the breeze.
I think I could paint something different from Descanso Gardens every day and not ever get bored. Do you have a place you feel that way about? Whether it’s a park or a garden or a part of the city that you call your artistic “home?”
Golden Mountain – Daily Painting
Golden Mountain 6.5″ x 3.75″
eBay Auction begins 8 AM, Los Angeles time
In the spring, California’s mountains glow with warm light as waves of wild mustard blanket them. This watercolor sketch, from memory and imagination, recalls the days between seasons when winters’ snow gives way to the hazy yellow of spring.
The watermark is not in the original artwork.
How it might look framed:
“As the Parade Passed By” – new painting
“As the Parade Passed By” – 12′ x 15″ watercolor on paper.
VIVA Gallery – NWS all member show
Last week, I got some very good news that I’d like to share with you. If you’ve been following this blog for the last year or so you can imagine how much this “first time” means to me.
I found out that this new painting, “As the Parade Passed By” has been juried into the Natl. Watercolor Society’s all member show, which will be hung in about a month at the VIVA gallery in Sherman Oaks, California (in the San Fernando Valley.) I am delighted to be included in this show of other NWS members and look forward to becoming more involved through activities and future competitions as well.
The painting was developed from an original photograph I took at a parade not too long ago. The man had a faraway look that I wanted to work with and enhance in watercolor. It was painted about two weeks ago. The watermark, of course, is not on the original.
When I got my MJ at UCLA, one of my favorite J-school classes was photojournalism. To be able to fade invisibly into a crowd and capture a face, a look, a moment, still fills me with excitement. Translating that into another medium has made the experience all the more enjoyable and precious.
Detail:
P.S. Here’s a good article on the use of street photography as an art form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_photography#Photographing_without_permission
Descanso White Azalea – Daily Painting
Descanso White Azalea – 7.25 x 5.3 inches – watercolor on 140# paper – available
The azaleas have started blooming at Descanso again – some bushes show great masses of them and others just show one or two here and there. These were the topmost blossoms on one bush in the Japanese teahouse area. No doubt the rest of the shrub will burst forth very soon. I was painting there around noontime and the light striking the flowers made them seem to glow from within.
If you are going to be in the LA area in the spring, you really must visit Descanso Gardens in La Canada – one of LA’s loveliest botanical gardens.
Abstract Cliffs
Cliffside 7.25 x 3.25 – watercolor on paper
This small watercolor was an experiment in abstracting a scene – an exercise that I found very liberating and refreshing. When I look at the work of the California regional painters of the 30s and 40s, I see how often they broke away from realism to paint simplified forms and improvised color schemes. You can see the evidence of this movement in the highly designed travel posters of the era.
Quote of the day from Robert Henri:
“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”
May you all be in that state all this week!
Daily Painting – Sycamore Sentinel
7″ x 11″ Watercolor on 140# paper
SOLD
A sycamore at Eaton Canyon in the early fall, the San Gabriel mountains in the background. Do you see the white bird flying in the background over the mountain? It wasn’t intentional, just a little white space left by the twist of my brush as I was putting in the mountains. In fact, I didn’t see it until after I scanned it. Funny how these things are …
I’m not quite sure what’s happened in the last couple of days, or where this somewhat new direction is coming from, but for the moment I’m not going to question it, and just follow it and see what happens.
