Los Gatos Plein Air

It was a beautiful day for painting in downtown Los Gatos. We had a a huge turnout-28 people! The only downside was the parking-not many open spots and all of the spaces nearby had a 2 hour limit, so periodically, someone would have to jump up and run to move his or her car! We enjoyed a demo by Dick Zunkel, who uses a pen and ink technique with washes. He uses a Speedball nib in a holder, with black ink. I just used my Faber-Castell Pitt pen this time, but will definitely try out the equipment Dick recommends-loved the varied line weights he achieves with it.
I used an Arches cold-pressed block, 11" x 14". There are a few perspective issues, but I was happy with the first run at it.

Plein Air on March 29th

It was a beautiful morning after several days of rain and 17 people turned out at the old Agnews site. This was a state mental hospital for many years but when it closed down, 4 of the opriginal buildings were preserved. The clocktower, former director's house and 2 other beautiful  old Spanish-style buildings are adorned with intricate brick and tile work on stucco. One of our paintsite leaders, Sylvia remarked that the  grounds are almost like an arboretum.

This is the old clocktower in a 9"x7' Cachet spiral-bound watercolor book. the shade patterns changed rapidly, as the clouds moved in and out.

This view of some of the trees is in pen and ink on a 10"x 14" Arches cold-press block. The colors on this piece look awfully wimpy in the scan-they're not quite as pale in person, but I should have pushed them some. My main focus was mixing lots of greens and trying to differentiate among the various kinds of foliage. 

PEO Cover Art

Here's the painting I did for this year's cover of our chapter yearbook. The themes I can use are stars and daisies, so inspiration is hard to come by. Using a photo from a seed catalogue for a reference, I tried to be a little looser than usual and it worked out well. I don't know whether the subtle shading in the petals will be discernable in the scan. Was almost done when I realized I should have been working in portrait format, rather than landscape. I guess the sides will just have to be cropped to make it work. It was done on an Arches 7" x 10" cold press block.

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!
NOTE: I'm happy to say that this little piece was SOLD in June!

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!