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!                                       

Jan Hart Workshop

Last week I participated in a watercolor workshop led by Jan Hart, as artist who lives in Costa Rica. She has an enormous amount of knowledge about pigments, which was very interesting. In the past, she worked very closely with the Daniel Smith company and she started us out with samples of a few of their paints. She had us use a very limited palette consisting of Ultramarine Turquoise, Quinacridone Sienna, Nickel Azo Yellow, Quinacridone Magenta, and Zoisite(one of Smith's proprietary PrimaTek pigments.) While this is a rather bizarre palette, she wanted us to understand the unique properties of the paints. Above you see my first painting from the workshop-it's from a reference photo I took of kohlrabi that I grew in my garden, laying on an old tarp. This may be my all-time favorite thing I've ever done! It isn't exactly what one might hang in the living room, but I just love the way the colors blended on the paper and the loose, casual look that I labored so hard to achieve!

My second piece was a vase of peonies that I have painted before (and posted a couple of months ago.) The soft cloth in the background gives it a surreal look. I used the same palette as above, plus Permanent Rose. I like the way the peonies turned out, but I'm back to my ususal controlled style. I still want to do these again. By the way, I used quarter sheets of Arches cold press for all of these.

All was not rosy in the workshop-I tackled a beautiful landscape photo of a vineyard that our friend Erick took a few years ago. This time I used the same palette with the most unfortunate addition of Cadmium Red (WHY??? I've always hated this pigment!) On the last day of the workshop, Jan took on the challenge of "saving" a couple of paintings people had despaired of fixing, including this one. Even she couldn't salvage this overworked disaster! She added all sorts of colors but it was too late. RIP, vineyard.

There's a 4th painting I still have to complete-may post it at a later date.



Alum Rock Park Plein Air

This is a small (10"X7") painting I did about 6 weeks ago on a SCVWS Plein Air group outing at Alum Rock Park. There are beautiful old stone grottoes and bridges left from its heyday early in the last century.

Plein Air at Ardenwood

On October 13th I joined the SCVWS Thursday Plein Air painters at Ardenwood Farm  in Fremont. I used one of my new Arches blocks that is made specifically for land and sea scapes. This one is 3" x 10"-quite small. Fall colors were just beginning to show on a few of the trees, but the field of pumpkins was the real show!