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?
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Watercolor – 11 x 15 cold press paper – plein air at the Santa Barbara CA Botanic Garden for Native Plants
Today we took a drive up to Santa Barbara to scout a location for a work project, and my dear husband suggested I turn it into a painting day as well. I had never visited the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, which enjoys a reciprocal membership with Descanso Gardens, so we spent a little time there in the early afternoon.
Unlike Descanso, all of the plantings are California natives. Just walking through the oak groves and open meadows reminded me what natural beauty we have here without planting water-demanding non-natives. I found a shady place at the entrance to one of the trails and set up my easel.
This was painted using three brushes: a one inch flat, a #12 round and a ‘rigger,’ which is a thin, flexible springy little brush. As usual, the light was changing rapidly as the sun is wont to do. Even in the 75 min. or so that I spent painting, the shadow patterns had shifted dramatically.
So I’m going to call this an entry for the “Go Somewhere New and Draw (Paint) what you see” challenge.
Here’s what the scene really looked like … with my easel in place …
Geranium way (sketch)
Another fast and rough sketch in the 9 x 12″ Raffine… in preparation for doing another painting in watercolor or oils. This one was painted with a half inch flat and a #12 round. Late afternoon on a tropical California side street.
In fact, it’s right next door to this house Capistrano Fence which I painted about a month ago.
The 20th anniversary issue of Watercolor magazine came in the mail the other day … oh, my the inspiration. If you haven’t seen it, go get it at the newsstand. The work is just outstanding … it makes you want to vow not to let a day go by without painting.
Sycamore Grove
Yesterday I got my first Raffine sketchbook by Lana, recommended by Lin Frye, so I decided to give it a test drive. The 9 x 12″ paper is very thick and slightly absorbent, and I’d say it takes a wet wash pretty well without bleeding through the back side of the paper. There was only slight buckling. I used a 1″ flat brush for this sketch and a thin flexible “rigger” brush. For quick studies (this took about 15-20 minutes) and an economical price tag (12.99 for a 48 page book) this might just be my favorite so far. I even like the slightly rough texture which makes it possible to get some interesting textures.
I haven’t tried a watercolor Moleskine yet, but the large size of this sketchbook appeals in that it allows me to use a bigger brush and to concentrate on large areas of color and value. Watercolor colors used: light red, quin magenta, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, sap green, yellow green.
In the coming days I’ll also try it out with ink, colored pencil, charcoal, pencil and acrylic, if you’d like to check back to see the results of my experiments …
P.S. My first eBay watercolor painting auction concludes Sunday night …
Click to see auction
Eaton Canyon Abstract
This was one of the other watercolor sketches that I did on our paint out day last Tuesday. (Compare with the other sketch – scroll down.) It was toward the end of the morning and I just grabbed a smaller piece of Fabriano to experiment on with more calligraphic brushwork. I had no expectations which was quite freeing, actually. The limited palette encouraged me to think more about shape and value and less about mixing a whole bunch of colors. Some was painted wet in wet, and some painted after it dried. I’m thinking that this might be a good warmup exercise for the next outing, but because the light continues to degrade as the morning goes on, I usually want to get busy on a bigger piece.
Plein air Eaton Canyon
Watercolor on 140# paper … 9″ x 10″
Today our paint out group went to Eaton Canyon Nature Area in Altadena, CA … a new place where I had not painted before. In the early fall some of the trees were starting to show tinges of brown and gold, and the hills were brown from the long dried-up spring rye grass. This is typical California chapparal – hills scattered with oak trees and occasional accents of chemise, toyon and buckwheat.
This on location study is going to be the basis for an oil painting one of these days. I’m looking forward to going back there again soon. Check back tomorrow – I have two more (looser) watercolor sketches I did today, but I need to get them scanned up.
Fields of Gold
11″ x 11″ Mixed media, watercolor and pastel. Unframed.
SOLD
Well, I have finally decided to take the plunge and list something on eBay. Thanks to all the friends who have written me and given me the push to make it happen.
Prompted in part by the recent Illustration Friday theme of Farm, which I missed last week … and prompted also by the Ebay Art Squared (Art2) September theme of “Illustrate a song” – I decided upon one of my favorites, Sting’s “Fields of Gold.” I can scarcely think of another contemporary ballad that speaks to me so well about the cycles of life and love and enduring devotion. When the theme, the song and the concept came together, it just felt right. The Art Squared group theme features artwork that is in a square format, from very small up to 14″ x 14″.
Enjoy the lyrics again – or for the first time – here.
This mixed media painting comes partly from the imagination and partly from my reference files. After doing a smaller sketch on Stonehenge paper, I painted this directly on 140# watercolor paper, using several large brushes both rounds and flats. When those underlayers were finished and completely dry, I still found that it needed a little something extra. But I didn’t want to risk muddiness with glazing, so I reached for my pastels instead, adding more color to the clouds, the barley fields and foreground trees. Sometimes you just have to improvise.
Capistrano Fence
I have been posting less than usual the past few days because I’ve been trying to get out of my sketchbook and into bigger paintings. I’m hoping to to enter some in our Verdugo Hills society show and sale in the fall. Maybe I’ll be lucky and they’ll accept some for display. At any rate, this is a studio painting based on my own photo taken in Capistrano during our sketchcrawl earlier this year. I did a value study first and then just started painting it without preliminary drawing. It might have turned out differently (or better) if I had done an under-drawing first, but I tend to like to make things up as I go, solving color and value problems as I confront them. My goal here was to try to capture the quality of late afternoon light in a coastal beach community with a tropical feeling. The big tree is most likely a yucca, not a palm.
Because all monitors are different and a compressed picture isn’t as subtle as the real thing, the shadows are blue-violet but not as intense and dark as they may seem here. If the side of the house looks like a muted turquoise, then you’re probably seeing the hue right. The colors look so much better in person, though.
It’s painted on 140 # watercolor paper, and the image size is x 9.75″ x 13.5″ Matted, it would frame to 16 x 20, which is what I’ll do with it when I take it in to the show in the fall. Comments and feedback are very welcome!
Eucalyptus
Just a quick watercolor sketch of some eucalyptus – two of the 100 species growing in California – imported from Australia in the 1850s. Just as with palm trees, you can hardly look in any direction and not see eucalyptus trees. They are fast growers and were often used as windbreak protection for crops and livestock. Rich in volatile oils they also burn like torches in brush fires, which is why we don’t have any on our property and probably won’t plant any either. Eucalyptuses are aromatic and more than a little messy – they drop leaves, seeds, and peel bark. But their colors are lovely and the foliage comes in many shades of blue, green, gray and even a dusty red when the leaves are new.
The actual size of this study is 6.5″ x 8″ – mixed media – watercolor, brush pen and Winsor and Newton ink. I used mostly cobalt blue, payne’s gray, sap green and burnt sienna.
Road trip
Right now, my dear daughter and friend are on a road trip across the great southwest on her trek to relocate herself for two years at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business. Go wildcats! As much as I’d like to have stowed away in the back of her minivan under the featherbed and stereo, I will content myself instead with painting something of the landscape she may be seeing right about now in New Mexico. I painted this last night “alla prima” (all in one sitting) and it will probably take a few days to dry. It’s 9 x 12, oil on canvasboard. I used a limited number of colors – a cad yellow, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, thalo blue, white and a little raw sienna. Surprising how many other colors those few colors will make!
This is also my post for the “Inspire Me Thursday” open challenge. My challenge of the year has been to move beyond sketching and journaling into painting. I’ve done a lot of watercolors but this is only my 6th or 7th oil painting. My goal is to paint at least 2 oils a week – more if I can.
