Weekend in Santa Cruz

We drove over to Santa Cruz on Friday afternoon and spent the night at our friends Linda and Jim Owens' house. On Saturday morning we got up and drove down to the yacht harbor area, where Linda meets up with a crowd of her fellow ukulele players for what I guess they would call a jam session. (Although how much jamming a ukulele can do is questionable.) While they played. I walked down to the beach and did a couple of pen and ink drawings with washes. I used a Speedball #6 nib and black Speedball ink. I'm just learning to work with the pen-love the varying line weights you can get with it.

This is actually the second one I did-there was a race going on and lots of sailboats were out. Too bad they weren't all flying their spinnakers! This was done on a tiny 4" x 10" Arches cold-pressed block..

The scanner didn't pick up the colors as well as it might have-the light house looks better in my original, as does the sky. I used Dick Zunkel's 3 sky colors-colbalt, perm rose, and yellow ochre applied to wet paper for both paintings. Also, in the original the ocean is level-couldn't fit the whole paper in my scanner, so it looks tilted here.  This was on a 10" x 14" block.

Plein Air at Moss Landing

Last Thursday, May 17th,  7 of us from SCVWS met at Moss Landing on the ocean. It was a bit cool early in the day, and plenty windy, but we had a great day. There were boats, seascapes, and so much more for us to paint. We went to Phil's for lunch (I had the squid and chips!)Leaders Jenny and Sylvia, plus Brad and I were so happy to be out that we stayed until 4:45. I wore a ponytail and forgot to put sunscreen on my ears-a mistake I will NOT make again! 

This old boat was the last thing I did-drew it and got a little paint down, but I had to complete it at home.

I used a 10" x 14" Arches cold-pressed block.

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 I used  the same block for this piece-there were so many beautiful purples and sage greens in the foliage growing on the dunes. This was done under very adverse condidtions! The wind was blowing like crazy up on the dunes and my stool legs were sinking deeper and deeper as I worked. Working en plein air is not for the easily discouraged!

 This is actually the first painting I did in the morning-I edited out many boats and omitted a big building behind the Bay Fresh Seafood shop. There was a roaring diesel motor in the distance part of the time, but when it stopped, I could hear sea lions barking and the cries of the gulls. I used a 6" x 12" Arches cold-pressed block. Used a tan watercolor pencil for the initial drawing on all 3.