Casita Del Arroyo Garden Plein Air
SOLD Casita Del Arroyo Garden – 15″ x 11″ quarter sheet 140# D’Arches coldpressed paper
Today our Wednesday paintout group went to a charming location in the Pasadena Arroyo Seco area called Casita Del Arroyo. This little clubhouse was built in 1933 as a way to provide employment during the Depression. The stones came from the arroyo and the wood came from bicycle tracks used in the 1932 Olympic Games. The casita was made a cultural landmark in the 70s and a drought-tolerant garden was put in not too long ago.
This view is down a few steps from the driveway, looking toward a small path in the garden. The nasturtiums caught my eye in the morning sun, and I also liked the look of the cool stone retaining wall.
To say this was a challenge would be an understatement. Although the scene is shady, my viewpoint was out in the bright sun – which has been pretty hot lately in LA. In order to keep the sun off the paper, I needed to tip the paper to a near vertical position, which is a different way of working for me. (But that’s ok, I find that when nature throws me a curve it sometimes leads to new discoveries.)
The breeze and sun conspired to dry out my palette within minutes, so I found myself misting it with my spray bottle quite frequently. The puddles of paint would literally dry in the mixing area as I was watching!
This was painted between 9:20 and 11 in the morning, and the light was changing quite rapidly, meaning that shadows were moving and areas were coming into light that had previously been in shade. To accommodate that, I did several large background washes to block in areas of light and shade, and I painted the basic dark tree shape at the same time.
On the right is a honeysuckle vine and a clump of purple sage. Instead of getting caught up in a lot of small detail, I let gravity help me and I laid in several washes of soft mauves, blues and grays and let them run on the paper. I think this helped to suggest the softness of the large mass.
My painting friend Ginny said that that area looked like the light was coming through the paper, and when I stood back for a long look I think it does look quite bright in that region.
There’s a lot of negative painting in this one – on the tops of the honeysuckle bush, between the different kinds of foliage on the left.
If you look closely you’ll see evidence of:
wet into wet painting on the path
spatter – in the clump of foliage on the right
saving whites and other light areas – behind the tree and at the top of the wall where the rose is climbing
calligraphy – defining the stones of the wall and in the rose climbing over it and the slashed shadows of weeds across the path
scraping out – the textured highlights on the bark of the tree
the use of warm against cool, cool against warm
use of diagonals to add movement
Edited to add (in response to comments)
Where I usually begin is with a value sketch, if there’s time, but in this case, there wasn’t, so I needed to hold the image of the lights and darks in my head where I worked. In my faint underdrawing on the paper I placed the tree offset from the middle, on a line about 1/3 of the way from the right margin. I made the path to the tree diagonal because it’s more dynamic than straight ahead. With those two landmarks I drew in the wall but tilted it so that I could see more of it – I wanted it to be a place for roses to climb over. I made the nasturtiums much more prominent because that was what attracted me to the scene in the first place – the contrast of deep cools vs. hot bright colors where the sun came through.
I broke some rules here by having things in sharp focus all around the paper rather than confining them to one center of focus. If I had it to do over, I would correct that.
In case you are curious … this is what the scene actually looked like in real life. I didn’t paint from a photo, however …
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.
Malibu morning
“Malibu Morning” 9 x 12 watercolor on paper
This morning I had a reason to be in Malibu while my husband was taking care of some business nearby. The sky was clear and a light breeze was blowing on a picture-perfect day. After taking a brisk walk up and down the shore a few times, I settled to paint this view in my Raffine sketchbook, en plein air. It might become the basis for a larger oil painting back in the studio. I used a large Niji waterbrush for everything but the sky, which was added with a wash brush when I got home. The slight discoloration in the sky is from the unevenness of my journal on the flatbed scanner. In fact it’s a nice even thalo blue all the way across.
The location of this watercolor is about a quarter mile north of Gladstone’s – along Pacific Coast Highway. The headlands in the distance is close to where Topanga Canyon comes out to the coast, I think.
Wistaria branch
Wistaria Branch – 9 x 12″ on paper
Today’s paintout outing took us to a house in Sierra Madre where the world’s largest Chinese wistaria vine is growing. Sprawling, that is, over two homes. The perfume from the flowers was intoxicating as we painted the vine in all its springtime finery.
This was direct-painted primarily with a large, flat one-inch brush with no preliminary pencil drawing . The tiniest springs and trailing vines were added later with a very thin brush.
I think it has somewhat of an Asian feeling to it, appropriate to a plant that is native to China. What do you think?
Rosarium sycamore – Daily Painting
Watercolor on paper. 11″ x 6.25″
Tired but happy, I’m back from two back-to-back days of watercolor demonstrations in Orange County – one sponsored by Watercolor West, the other sponsored by the National Watercolor Society. The styles of the instructors (Chris Van Winkle and Cathy Quiel) were quite different but they both offered such inspiration and so much to absorb. And the two society shows were fantastic as well. If you’re in So. Cal and like watercolor, I urge you to see the shows at the Brea Civic Center and the Muckenthaler Cultural Center.
Because I was in student mode both days, I didn’t get out to do a new painting, so I offer one painted about ten days ago, one afternoon at Descanso Gardens. It was about 3:30 in the Rosarium, and the light was starting to filter through an old sycamore, creating that stained glass look that yellowing leaves get.
If you haven’t heard my good news yet, I am beaming with joy over something that happened yesterday. I entered my first juried show and was so very pleased to find out that not only did I get in but won 2nd prize. The painting that won was Descanso Arbor, painted about a month ago, with a winding path leading to a distant light spot.
So I’d like to say thank you, to everyone who reads here and so very many of you who have written me privately, for all the encouragement and support you’ve given as I’ve undertaken this year-long painting project. This is a better outcome than I had hoped for; I would have been thrilled just getting in the show.
Descanso Grape Arbor
11 x 14″ watercolor on 140# paper
This week I was not able to enjoy the company of our paintout group due to work conflicts, so when things settled down in the evening, I finished a painting that I began last week, plein air. It is a view of a pathway at my beloved Descanso Gardens – a path that goes by the native plant area where there is a small arbor covered with grapevines. As I was telling my art friend Belinda last week, I feel especially drawn to paths, roads, bridges and other sorts of landscape features that lead to somewhere else – perhaps somewhere mysterious and wonderful. And the color green – oh how I love green, which has always been my favorite color, and probably always will be.
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 …
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.
Rosarium Two
This watercolor sketch of the Descanso Gardens Rosarium was actually painted about a month ago, at the same time that I was primarily posting daily sketches of Cat Mandu. I knew that we were on borrowed time with her, and I wanted to share her drawings while she was still alive. The flowers will always be there, and so I am posting them now.
This was painted on location at Descanso Gardens at about 10 in the morning. The light is similar to that in Vista del Arroyo a few days ago and Rosarium Haze, only the sky was a bit clearer, so it’s not quite so hazy.
The page is 9 x 12, painted with tube watercolors, a dixie cup and a sable brush. If things go according to plan, I’ll also be making an oil painting from this sketch.
