Plein Air at Niles Railroad Museum 3/8/12

While the museum was closed on Thursday, the SCVWS Plein Air group had a beautiful day for wandering around the grounds and painting. Several of us elected to paint this old caboose. I used a tiny 4" x 10" Arches cold-pressed block and a fine-tipped black Faber Castell Pitt pen. Having the outline of the piece delineated and then breaking through the picture plane with the lamppost was something that just came to me as I began ro draw; I like the effect and wilI use it again sometime. Working with pen and ink and washes seems to yield the best results for me when I paint en plein air. I started a second painting of the old depot building, but it will never again see the light of day!

More Maui

Again, Arches 6"x12" cold-pressed block

Here's the second piece I did on the trip. I was sitting in pretty much the same spot as the day before, just turned a bit. It was much sunnier this time-not the gray sky of the previous day. I tried scratching some white into the water-not sure if I should have been more agressive with it. Or should have just hit it with some white gouache later.

Vaca in Hawaii!

6"x12" Arches cold-pressed block

Last week David and I flew to Maui for my birthday. We stayed at the Westin in the Ka'anapali area. It's an older hotel, but the grounds are lovely. I painted  2 pictures as I lounged by the pool on 2 separate afternoons. One of Junior's Award-Winning Mai-tais lets anyone feel like a great painter! I would have liked to go out to the beach to paint, but didn't want to pay $37 to rent 2 chairs and an umbrella for the day, and sitting on the sand would just not have worked for the several hours it would have taken me to get anything done.

Plein Air at Overfelt Gardens

On Thursday I went out to Overfelt Gardens is East San José with the SCVWS Plein Air group. Due to alarm clock issues, I was late and only had time to do a quick small painting of the pond. The ducks and Canada geese were busy and noisy, as always. This piece was done on a 6" x 12" Arches cold pressed block. As usual, my water doesn't look very wet, which is kind of ironic, as it took forever for ther paper to dry!

Red or Read Exhibit

                                                                       Queen of Hearts

                                                                            10" x 14"

Several weeks ago I registered for the upcoming SCVWS show, "Red or Red." At the time I only had an idea for a painting in my head; its transition to paper was rocky, to say the least. I'm sorry to say that after working on it for 2 weeks, the patient could not be saved. It was a murky. overworked mess. Three days ago, I hurriedly scrambled to get this piece done. The cards were originally a rubber stamp I had carved; the practice prints turned out beautifully, but the money shot-the one on my painting- looked like a smear of tar on the paper. I had used acrylic paint for the stamp, so there was no way to eradicate the image. I went back in and tried to paint over it to "fix" it with mixed results. Framed, it looks better than I expected, luckily. Moral of the story: don't make up a name; that's what the word "Untitled" is for!

Be sure to go by the Los Altos Library during the month of February to see 38 other very nice paintings, in addition to mine.

Plein Air-Santa Cruz

Last Thursday the SCVWS plein air painters braved record-breaking winds at the Mission and Holy Cross Church in Santa Cruz. My first painting of the mission will remain incommunicado, due to a perspective issue. After lunch I did this pen and ink drawing from the church grounds, looking back toward the plaza. I added washes later. It's on a 6" x 14" Arches cold-press block. I used a set of black Faber Castell Pitt pens with 4 different nib sizes. Love the way the redwood foliage turned out. It could use some shadows, though.
 We had a good time-the docent let us go into the walled garden to have lunch, which was fortunate or all of the treats we brought to share would have been blown miles away.

Plein air at Guadalupe Oaks Park

On Thursday the SCVWS Plein Air painters went to Guadalupe Oaks Park-a 63 acre park with lots of beautiful oak trees in the middle of a residential area. There are a couple of surprisingly high hills in the park, which give wonderful vistas of the valley. Mary Paquet even found a spot where she had a view of the downtown SJ skyline. There were 6 of us and we had a great time painting and helping Paint Site Leader Jenny Tero come up with ideas for the quilt she's making that illustrates Beatles songs! I did the first painting below of a cliff face in the old sandstone quarry in my Cachet spiral-bound book, 10" x 7". The cerulean sky granulated way too much, but there were plenty of streaky clouds. By the way, several of the buildings in San Jose's downtown were constructed using sandstone from the quarries in Almaden, including what is now the SJ Museum of Art (originally the post office.) Also, the charming Romanesque Revival Leticia Building on north First Street, which is now occupied by a law firm; the structure dates from 1890. A number of years ago, my dear friend, Eileen Connery, and I organized architectural walking tours of downtown and both of these buildings were on our tour!



The second is a different quarry view-I did this one on that odd little 4" x 10" Arches cold press block. A little more work would probably improve it-I began a bit of negative painting at the top of the cliff, which I like, but I don't want to overdo, so...maybe I should just leave it alone and get on with life!