Painting popcorn ball flowers (hydrangeas) instead…

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Have you ever been so sleepy you’re just slap-happy silly? That’s how I was yesterday. I’ve been trying to change my schedule to get up early and go to bed early but after a few days of doing the former but not the latter, I was so sleep-deprived yesterday afternoon that I just stopped making sense, even to myself.

When I get over-tired, instead of thinking, “sleep,” I think I’m hungry and crave carbs (and now research is showing that sleep deprivation causes weight gain and other health risks…see here and here).  So instead of eating popcorn (or going to bed at 7:00), I decided to paint these “popcorn ball flowers” (as my sister and I used to call hydrangeas when we were kids…and I thought everybody did until I Googled “popcorn ball flowers because I can never remember their real name, and discovered only recipes for making flowers out of popcorn and no references to hydrangeas!).

First I had to refill my watercolor palette because a couple weeks ago I’d washed out all the funky old paint that had been in there for too long. Some of it was getting moldy and all of it was dirty.  Before refilling my palette, I did color tests of all my paints to decide which pigments I wanted to use now. I love organizing things, so this was a perfectly soothing task for a tired mind.

Finally I was ready to paint, and grabbed my homemade 6×8″ sketchbook filled with hot pressed Fabriano Artistico paper, and this bouquet of hydrangeas from my yard that I’d plopped into a drinking glass the day before. Instead of starting with my usual ink drawing, I used pencil and then painted using more of an oil painting technique, starting with the darkest darks instead of the lights.

Maybe it was because I was so tired, but I had so much fun, just being playful as I painted and not worrying about the outcome. As usual I wished I’d stopped about 10 minutes sooner and someday I’ll learn that “when you’re 75% finished you ARE finished!”  Some day….

If you’d like to know which pigments I settled on, click “Continue Reading for the details….

Port Costa’s St. Patricks Mission Church

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After gusts of wind blew dirt in my face,  a couple of trains roared by, and a bunch of motorcyle guys on Harleys rode up to have a nice morning beer at the saloon (below), I decided to move from where I originally set up in the unpaved parking lot at the end of the road in Port Costa. One of the motorcycle guys was wearing a DayGlow orange T-shirt that proclaimed, “Can you see me now ASSHOLE?!”

Porta Costa is a tiny town (pop. 250) founded in 1879 as a port for merchant sailing ships, with warehouses, saloons and hotels on waterfront wharves. A few of those original buildings are still there and (except for the church) appear not to have been painted or maintained much since then. This is the hotel that I was originally going to paint, which was originally a bordello and is supposed to be haunted:

I headed up the tree-lined street a couple of blocks and set up behind a watercolor painter from my plein air group who was also painting the church. Halfway into the painting session, automatic sprinklers turned on beside us, spattering the watercolor painter’s full-sheet painting, creating interesting textural effects on her church.  The occasional sprinkle was a welcome relief from the muggy heat for me, since water doesn’t affect oil paintings.

About the painting:

Oil on panel, 12×9″

I ran out of time before our group critique at 1:00 and didn’t get to paint in the beautiful tree that was in front of the church. I figured I could finish it from a photo at home, except that I forgot to take a picture of the church (duh!) I put in a few details from memory and skipped the tree.  The painting was done between 11:00 a.m. and 12:45 with the  sun straight overhead so there wasn’t much modeling or shadows except under things.

Cemetery Conversations on July 4th

Version 1: Low Tide: S.F. Bay from Sunset View Cemetery, Oil on panel, 9×12″ (Larger)

UPDATE (one week later):

I did a little revising on the painting below, trying to work with the suggestions people offered. I think there are some improvements (I like the distant hills better and I toned down the sailboats and removed the sign and tried to make the town look more like buildings). I feel like I’ve taken it as far as it needs to go as a sketch.

Version 2:

Below is my painting buddy Peggy’s painting of the scene (the title is a reference to the view from a cemetery). She painted the clouds and water as they were at the end of our session. With plein air painting you’re always painting what you remember or what you anticipate.

Peggy Anderson: “Angel Island from the Afterlife”

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What I really wanted on the Fourth of July was a quiet day at home but I’d made plans with a couple of painting friends to go up to the nearby Sunset View Cemetery to do some plein air painting. It was a typical July morning in the San Francisco Bay Area: cold, windy, foggy and cloudy, and even more so on top of the hill where I decided to paint, a spot called “Viewpoint Garden,” with a widescreen view of Albany, El Cerrito, and, shrouded in fog, Angel Island and Marin County across the bay.

Before I got my gear out of the car, a large Chinese family arrived and started heading up the path to the viewpoint. I asked if they were having a service there, and they sent their only English speaker, a young man, to talk to me. He said it was just a small family service and they’d be done in half an hour.

Flowers for the Dead not the Deer

While we were waiting at the edge of the garden, an elderly Asian man came up the path carrying a basket of flowers which he was putting in holders at numerous graves. I asked him if he worked there (thinking people paid to have flowers maintained at gravesites) and he said, “No, these are all my friends and family…over there is my wife, that’s my brother, that’s my best friend, and back there are my parents and two of my other brothers. They all wanted to have a nice view.”

He said that he was 91 years old and grew the flowers in his garden. He showed us how many bouquets were scattered around the grass, having been pulled out of their holders and chewed up my the local deer. He only grows flowers that deers won’t eat to bring to the cemetery on his weekly visits.

Burning Stuff for the Departed:

Meanwhile, the Chinese family were lighting things on fire (possibly paper models of stuff the deceased might need or always wanted in life but didn’t get, according to this article) in a large trash can, creating huge amounts of smoke, as well as burning incense, and taking turns bowing numerous times before the grave of their dearly departed.  I asked the elderly man if they were his family too and he exclaimed loudly, “NO! They’re Chinese, I’m Japanese!” (Oops.)

I suggested he talk more quietly so we wouldn’t bother the family but he continued speaking loudly (despite his two hearing aids), saying, “Oh, we’re not bothering them. Those Chinese people are always burning stuff here and I don’t like it!” Then he regaled us with his (mostly) interesting life history. By then the Chinese family had put out the fires and packed up and headed out, thanking us for waiting. We looked at the grave afterward and it was a man who’d died a year earlier.

Buried standing up?

We were trying to figure out why the graves were so close together in that area—just little placques in the ground a few feet apart. We decided it must be urns of ashes that are buried there, although at first I wondered if people were buried standing up to save space. While that’s unlikely, given the way we think of the dead resting in peace, it did strike me that it would be a perfect metaphor for my life, since I’m always on my feet, on the go, trying to fit so much into every day. It made me tired just to think about spending eternity doing the same.

Catching a Rapist:

Then Peggy  told us about a friend who’d helped catch a wanted rapist. She’d been hiking in a park and decided to use the Porta-Potty. The door was unlocked but when she opened it there was a man inside who gleefully exposed himself. She ran and called the police once she was safely away. The police arrived, arrested him and told her he had a history of multiple rapes. He’d been known to watch a woman park her car and go into the woods. Once she was out of sight he’d disable her car and then offer to “help” her with it when she returned. Yikes!

About the painting:

Despite a very good start, after several hours I’d made a mess of the painting, and eventually got so mad at having lost all of the good beginnings (and the whole day) I rather violently scraped the panel down and threw it away. I’d taken photos of the scene and decided to start the painting over again at home. A migraine on Saturday delayed it another day, but finally on Sunday I gave it another chance and finished it today.

What attracted me to the scene originally was the way the low tide left little stripes of water over mud in the little harbor but by the time I set up and did the initial drawing, the tide came in and it disappeared. I’d never tried to paint an urban view like this before and couldn’t figure out a good way to do it and scraped it off several times, after either getting too detailed or too vague.

Finally, working from the photo, I decided the only solution was to TURN THE PHOTO and the PAINTING UPSIDE DOWN and just paint shapes upside down! That seemed to help. I also really wanted to capture the look of a gray day with some sun and clouds and fog.  This was definitely a tough one and I don’t think I completed succeeded on any of my goals.

That sign sticking up at the bottom in the middle is for 99 Ranch Market, a Chinese supermarket in Albany whose sign really does reach that far above everything else. When I looked closely at my photo there was also a giant red gorilla balloon advertising a carpet store to the right of the sign, but I didn’t put that in the painting. It’s one thing to “Paint the dog before the fleas” but entirely another to paint the landscape before the red gorilla!

If you have any suggestions to improve the painting, I’d be interested to hear them. Here’s the original photo (click to enlarge it):

Smoky, Sunny, Windy Day at Albany Bulb

Oil on panel, 10×12″ (larger)

With over 1,000 wildfires burning in Northern California, the air has been smoky, reducing the visibility and giving everything an eery pinky-grey tint. Instead of sunsets, a small, fire-red sun slowly sets behind curtains of gray. Even the moon appears small and red.

On Sunday morning there was a breeze blowing in from the ocean which seemed to clean the air a bit so Peggy, Dennis and I went to paint down at the “Albany Bulb” (a small chunk of land that sticks out into the San Francisco Bay). About 1:00 the sea breeze turned into a wild wind. The gusts were so strong that brushes and palette knives blew out of my painting box and the wind kept jerking my arm, making it hard to paint any details (maybe a good thing, in my case?).

Before the Albany Bulb became a waterfront park, it was a landfill (euphemism for dump). Years later,  artists used the area to create sculptures (like these below) from driftwood and drift-trash that floats in from the Bay or was dumped there during the landfill years. Now it’s a rough-hewn park and a sort of outdoor anarchist art gallery and a part of part of the San Francisco Bay Trail.

These sculptures at the Bulb were created by Oakland artist Jason De Antonis. If you click to enlarge and look closely you’ll see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Jason was just finishing the sculpture of the dog on a roof(?) when I took these photos last year.

Orchids in Green Bottle & Mental Spam

Oil on panel, 14×11″ (larger)

I love painting glass and was happy with the way this bottle turned out. I tried to use the same free and fun approach I take to painting glass in watercolor and it actually worked this time. I wish the flowers were as easy.

It’s easier to show off the beauty and delicate nature of flowers in watercolor than in oil paint, especially white flowers. In watercolor you don’t use white paint, but rather leave the brilliant white of the paper for white areas.

White oil paint can look blueish, cold, chalky and dull so in oil painting you have to create the illusion of warm glowing light by placing either dark or subdued, neutral, or grayed colors beside the white so in comparison it looks bright.  It also helps to add a little yellow or orange to white paint to warm it. I tried doing all of the above in this painting, but still struggled with the white flowers, scraping and repainting several times.

I read an inspiring and funny post on singer Christine Kane’s blog called “What Spam Can Teach You About Inner Peace.” It’s really worth reading if you have one of those annoying inner critics who says mean things about you or your artwork. While you’re there, check out another post of hers that is helpful for artists and/or self employed people, “How to Get Off the Hamster Wheel.”

China Camp & Two Surprise Parties

Old Boat on Rails, Oil on panel, 9×12″ (larger)

Blazing hot sun on the beach made plein air painting a challenge Sunday at China Camp State Park, an historic site where Chinese immigrants lived in a shrimp fishing village in the 1880s. It is a fabulous place to paint, with a small ghost town and old boats, (many with Chinese lettering) beautiful views of bay and marshland and hiking and biking trails that go for miles.

I was painting with the Benecia Plein Air Painters, a wonderful group of painters led by Jerry Turner. Many painters stayed until sunset, capturing the sunset and late afternoon glowing light. I painted from about noon until 3:30 (minus a break for a suprise birthday party lunch for Jerry) and after a little splashing around in the water, headed home to the fog belt to cool off.

I’d been given my own surprise birthday party the day before by my wonderful neighbors. I was completely stunned and delighted to find all my dearest friends and family and coworkers standing there throwing confetti and yelling Happy Birthday!

What a feast my neighbors made for me, with all of my favorite traditional Mexican foods that C & A are famous for, plus a beautiful cake and decorations galore. Their backyard was covered in balloons, and signs and banners and a banquet’s worth of delicious food.  What a special birthday treat!

One of my party favors was a purple hat that says “At my age, Happy Hour is a NAP!” I love it! My yearlong birthday celebration continues….

Jumbo Apricots - Quick Oil Study

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I did this painting before bed last night, giving myself just an hour or two to complete an oil sketch. The panel I was using was a bit slick so the paint wasn’t sticking as well as I’d have liked but I was reasonably pleased with the attempt.

While I was painting my wonderful next door neighbors brought me a huge bouquet of flowers for my birthday. For some reason, as each of the three kids and their parents said “Happy Birthday!” and gave me a hug I said “Happy Birthday to you too!” It wasn’t until I’d said it three or four times that I realized it made no sense. Since English is their second language, maybe they thought that’s just another odd American custom (or another odd Jana-ism). They already thought it was weird enough that I was spending my birthday evening by myself in my studio.

But of course painting is what makes me happy and I get to do what makes me happy on my birthday. I told them I’d paint the flowers the next day (and then realized I’d already started painting them as I’d answered the door with several painty brushes in my hand, and the paint was getting all over the bouquet wrapper.

I started the day with my annual tradition of a hike to Fat Apples Restaurant for a French Apple Pancake with my sister, my niece, and my best friend Barbara. We’ve been doing this every year for at least ten years and it was great spending time together and the pancake/souffle was perfect.

About the painting: Oil on panel, 10×8

Hydrangeas Plein Air & Creativity Interview

Oil on panel, 6×8″ (larger)

It felt so good to get outside and paint this sunny afternoon, even if it was only for an hour on the side of my house by my trash cans where this small hydrangea is finally starting to blossom and grow.

Creativity Interview

I was interviewed by Creativity Coach, Liz Massey and she posted the interview on her blog today. If you’d like to read about my creative process, thoughts on inspiration, overcoming artistic blocks, etc., please stop by her excellent blog. While you’re there, check out some of her other interviews. I was especially intrigued by her post about “clutter-busting with one sentence journaling.”

Painting lessons learned the hard way

This week I’ve been mucking about in the studio trying to fix the compositional problems with my painting of the ladies at the farmer market. Today I gave up on it and moved on.

The struggles I had with it were a good reminder for me about how important it is to resolve compositional issues before starting to paint (like the area where you couldn’t tell hands from plastic bag from shopping cart handle).  Also a good lesson that if a painting’s initial framework isn’t working, it’s better to start over than to spend hours and hours trying to fix it. Although I really liked many parts of that painting, it just wasn’t working as a whole.

Inspiration at 87

My sister and I joined my vibrant and adorable 87 year old aunt and her two sons (our cousins) who I hadn’t seen for 30 years for lunch today. It was so inspiring to see how youthful my aunt is — she drives, goes bowling with her girlfriends, and takes long walks several times a day with her Border Collie.

New blog: Postcard A Day

I heard a story on NPR about a father who sent his daughter a postcard every day that she was in college — 1,000 all together. They contained random stories about his day, questions and advice. It occurred to me how much that was like blogging (a daily post) except that he was sending actual tangible items through the mail instead of posting them online.

That gave me the idea to do the same, except as an artist (he was a bus driver) I create my own postcards and send the messages to anyone I feel like, whether dead, alive or imaginary. Instead of Googling for answers to questions I send virtual postcards into the blogosphere and channel the wisdom of the recipients to send myself responses. Some days it’s just a “wish you here” note and picture from my world. Other days it might be a dream message. Who knows? Anything goes…

I’m still going to regularly post here on Jana’s Journal (my sketches, plein air paintings and work in progress) but my daily postcards will be on PostcardsaDay.

The picture above was posted it to J. J. Audubon on PostcardaDay.com with this message:

Dear Mr. Audubon,

Why is the robin called “Turdus Migratorius?” Turdus doesn’t sound very nice. And where do they sleep? Do they sleep in nests or just sitting on a branch int he tree? How do they not fall off? Probably the same way we don’t fall off our beds. Or do they sleep on the ground? If they fall out of the tree while they’re asleep do they fly in their sleep?

Love,
Jana

The very next day I received a message from J. J. Audubon and you can see it now on www.PostcardaDay.com.

Better than Plastic: Blue Glass Water Bottle

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While eating dinner, reading an art book and drinking water from this bottle I became fascinated by the bottle and had to immediately go paint it. The bottle came from from Trader Joes filled with sparkling water. It makes a great reusable water bottle. I washed off the label and just refill it with filtered tap water and a squirt of lemon from my lemon tree and then refrigerate it.

To avoid buying and throwing away tons of plastic water bottles (you’re not supposed to reuse them because they can’t be cleaned properly) I’ve tried a variety of lexan, Nalgene, and stainless steel water bottles. I like to use this glass bottle at home (it’s too heavy and breakable to be portable) and a Kleen Kanteen stainless steel bottle with a sport cap when I go out.

What did we do for water before water bottles and car cup holders? I guess there were thermoses but those weren’t for water. I remember carrying a large purse to middle school in order to carry my big can of hairspray, but I know I never carried water.

When I was a kid, doctors didn’t recommend drinking 8 glasses of water a day like they do now, but they did recommend cigarettes. One cigarette brand ran ads in medical journals with the claim that its cigarettes were “Just as pure as the water you drink.” One of the most infamous cigarette advertising slogans was associated with Camels:”More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” That ad appeared in medical journals and the popular media for eight years.

About the painting: 6×8″ on Arches cold-press 140 pound watercolor paper in my handmade sketchbook. Mostly Winsor Newton paint plus the bright turquoise on the right side of the big bottle from Kremer Pigments. The funny shadow on the right actually looked like that but it made me happy because it reminded me of the amazing pot and shadow studies, which I adore on Alison’s blog, Scribbles Adagio.

Farmers Market Friends (Work in Progress)

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I’m really happy with the way this painting (from a photo I took at the Farmers Market) is progressing and since I couldn’t finish it tonight and it’s back to the office tomorrow, I decided to share it as a work in progress.

Questions for you:

1. Can you tell that the woman on the left is resting her hands on her shopping cart handle and that there’s a plastic bag of stuff in the cart?
2. Is the way her hands are mostly one light shape confusing?
3. Is that area of hands/cart handle/plastic bag distracting? (Before I pointed it out.)
4. Do you think I should leave their shirts alone or add the patterns that were really on their shirts?
5. Anything you see that needs fixing (other than the list above and below)?

I still need to add paint to the truck in the background to get the color right, paint in the lettering and add some contrast to the lady on the right (and maybe adjust her face a bit).

Farmers Market Diversity, Roses & Revised Painting

(Larger) Finished but not satisfied…

Saturday I walked to the Farmers Market at El Cerrito Plaza with the plan to make some watercolor sketches. After half an hour exploring, taking photos and trying to find a spot to sketch I realized I needed to get out of there.

That happens to me sometimes; one minute I’m enjoying the sights and sounds somewhere and the next I just have to leave. Maybe it’s a blood sugar thing—it was time for lunch—or I’d just had enough of crowds and sun and wanted to get back to the studio. Since it’s my Birthday month to do whatever I please I didn’t push myself to stick it out and get a sketch; instead I headed to Peets Coffee for an iced-latte and a nice long walk home.

I took photos of the glorious produce displays at the market, but I couldn’t resist sharing this photo that captures the wonderfully diverse womanhood in the Bay Area. I wish I knew what the rest of her pants say:

New Camera

I got some great photos at the Farmers Market (that inspired two paintings in progress) with my new camera that is quite compact but has 10x optical zoom. A few years ago I bought a similar camera but for twice as much money and it’s four times bigger and heavier and less competent. I find it amazing how some technology just keeps advancing exponentially while others, like cars, just keep chugging along, not that much more sophisticated all these years later, than Model Ts.

Revised Painting:

Below are a couple or previously posted plein air paintings that I decided to try to finish up (or finish off, as the case may be) in the studio.

Asparagus, Peach & Painting with Children

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The kids next door brought over a plate of delicious Mexican-style barbeque tonight courtesy of their Papa who’d cooked it. I invited them to come back after dinner to join me in the studio. Now that they’re a little older (2nd grade and 6th grade) I decided to let them try acrylics instead of just watercolor.

I covered the table, put out the supplies, including gloves for each of them (I get Costco’s “Nitrile Exam Gloves” in quantity). Then I turned on some music and went to my drawing table to work on this little sketch.

The next time I checked on them, Y had painted my cat (I mean a picture of my cat), a rainbow (standard little girl stuff) and then made a paper airplane which she was painting while E was decorating a little wooden car he’d made in school. They both made Father’s day and birthday cards for their dad too.

They really liked the acrylics since they were brighter and bolder than the watercolor, but what a mess! Fortunately kids, floor and furniture cleaned up easily.

About the painting:
Pentel Pocket Brush Pen to draw, then watercolor and then some Schmincke Chinese White to tone down some of the shadows. I’d be happier if I’d stopped before it need to be toned down. This is in my 6×8″ handmade sketchbook on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper.

Roses & a freshly cleaned house

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I gave myself the pre-birthday gift of a professional house cleaning today, by the most fabulous house cleaner in the universe. She cleans things that have never even occurred to me to clean, and when she’s done the house seems to sigh and say “Thanks, I needed that!”

When I walked in the door this evening there was a palpable feeling of clean and everything seemed to glow. These roses from my garden were perched on the dining room table, adding to the feeling of fresh and sweet.

Having my house cleaned is a special treat for me; a gift I give I’ve recently started giving myself twice a year, for my birthday and for New Years. Those are both times of reflection and renewal for me so it seems fitting to create an environment that is also renewed and has a sense of space and possibility.

About the painting:
Drawn with brown ink on 8×6″ hot pressed watercolor paper in handmade sketchbook; painted with watercolor plus a little Chinese White added at the very end to soften the table top color.

Birthday & Benicia’s Matthew Turner Park

Oil on 12×9″ panel (Larger)

Yay! First day of June, and I get to celebrate my (mid-month) birthday all month long. Because it’s a really big birthday, this year I’m going to celebrate all year instead of “just” all month! It’s also the birthday of Jana’s Journal and Sketch Blog, now entering it’s third year.

To kick off my wonderful yearlong celebration, this morning I went to a paintout at Matthew Turner Park in Benicia followed by a visit to the opening of the Outsiders show at Arts Benicia Gallery. Today’s paintout was organized by the Benicia Plein Air Painters, also known as “Da Group.” Da Group is led by Jerry Turner, one of the founders and a prolific member of the Outsiders. It was a very well-attended opening, and a terrific show. There are photos of the paintout and the opening here.

In my painting above a windsurfer scooted by as I was finishing (well, running out of time, actually) so I stuck it in the painting. I’m not sure you can tell what it is, and whether it should be better defined. There’s lots more I could do to the painting, but I’m finding it pleasurable to call plein air studies done without trying to perfect them back in the studio; just appreciating them for the studies they are and all the wonderful sights, sounds, scents and memories of the experience that they contain.

Here’s my first block-in of the scene. My focal point was the orange hill with a little house on top across the water. Those black spots are little bugs who nose-dived into the wet paint (or were blown in by the strong winds today).

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Here’s a photo of the scene. You can barely see the little house on the hill.

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I wrote about this great little park and posted an earlier painting I did there last December here. I remember how much harder it was to paint that day, and how much more I understand now. Progress! Yay!

Passable Painting Passages

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I’m learning to appreciate the bits of paintings that work while letting go of the parts that won’t/can’t be fixed. These two sections pleased me, even though the original paintings as a whole were not successful. In both cases I started off boldly, got the big shapes blocked in and immediately painted the two segments above.

Then I got tired, the sun went down and the room in the light changed, the flowers opened in the heat, the floodlight I was using burned out and I didn’t have another, the setup got moved (thanks kitties…see below) and although I tried to fix both paintings over and over I finally decided to cut my losses once again and move on.

I learn so much with each painting, whether it works as a whole or not. I’ve started putting labels on the backs with the year, a serial number and a few words about what worked, what didn’t and what I learned. It will be fun at the end of the year to review my progress.

Fiona taking up modeling:

Rose set up day one (and on my bulletin board art by Pete, Alison and John Sonsini’s wonderful portraits):

Cemetery Painting on Memorial Day & War Euphemisms

Oil on panel, 9×12″ (larger)

On Sunday I painted at the small, historic Alhambra Cemetery in Martinez, where we had an amazing view of marshes and Benicia across the Carquinez Straits. An elderly Japanese church group and their pastor were  holding a memorial service for the fallen soldiers buried there but didn’t mind us painting among the graves. Since the residents were buried between 1851 to 1999, I’m sure they “fell” in many different wars.

War Euphemisms
I hate all the euphemisms used about war that gloss over the the sacrifices and suffering. The two that particularly irk me are “in harm’s way” and “fallen” soldiers.

When I hear politicians talking about soldiers “in harms way” I can’t help but thinking, “Yeah, and you sent them there!” “In harms’ way” is in passive voice which removes all responsibility from the phrase. It sounds as if they just ended up there by accident, like “I was taking a walk and found myself on Harms Way when I meant to be on Walnut Way.”

The same is true of “fallen soldiers.” No verb or anyone taking responsibility there either. The soldier just accidentally wandered onto Harms Way and then, Oops, down he fell.

G.I. Joe
When my son Cody was in Kindergarten he desperately wanted a G.I. Joe lunch box. We were walking through the supermarket and he saw them on the shelf and started whining and begging for one. I grabbed the plastic box, showed him the explosive picture on the cover and began ranting: “You see this? That’s a bomb going off! You see this G.I. Joe guy? That bomb is about to kill him and tear him to shreds! That guy has a mommy and his mommy is going to cry and cry forever because her little boy got blown up by a bomb. And no, I’m not going to buy you a lunch box with a picture of someone’s little boy getting killed on it!”

I still have my “War is not health for children and other living things” pendant and poster from the Viet Nam war, which destroyed so many of the boys I knew in high school. I feel such sadness and compassion for the soldiers and their families whose lives are being destroyed by our current war.

This isn’t meant to be a political blog so I’ll stop my rant by offering a prayer for peace and for healing for all those who are suffering because of war, regardless of which war or what side they’re on.

About the painting and the site: To get into the cemetery you have to first stop by the the Martinez police department to pick up the key to the entry gate which is kept locked. Although I ran out of time and hadn’t fully developed the bottom 1/3 of the painting, the sky, or the water, my other plein air group members said they liked it as is and to leave it, so I did. What interested me about the scene and what I wanted to paint was the pinky-golden hills and I was actually happy with the way they turned out — a first for me and hills.

I’m learning to appreciate and treasure the smallest passages that succeed in my paintings, even if the painting as a whole doesn’t work. They give me hope and a glimpse of successful days to come.

Playing with my flowers

White ink, gouache on black Canford paper 10″x8″ (larger)

I got home from work just as my painting group was arriving for our weekly painting session in my studio. I grabbed a quick bowl of shredded wheat for dinner, fed the cats and plopped this little vase of white flowers on my drawing table.

I looked at the dainty, delicate white flowers, and feeling a little rebellious decided to draw them with white ink (using my favorite white ink pen, a Uni-ball Signo) on black paper, with no idea what I’d do after that. This was a “let’s try this and that and see what happens” sort of thing.

Once I had the drawing I decided to fool around with adding a little gouache. Just for fun I stopped before I’d covered all the petals, leaving some random black spots.

What I discovered is how much fun it is to paint with gouache on a dark background, which I’d never done before. It reminded me of those cool coloring books I always wanted (but rarely got) when I was a kid where you painted with water and the painting appeared magically.

It might have been a “better” painting if I’d paid attention to value, composition, light, etc. but tonight I just felt like playing like a kid, not trying to make a good painting.

Here’s the drawing without the gouache:

Which do you like better?

Avocado Study & Painting Fleas

Oil on panel, 10×8″ (larger)

“Paint the dog before the fleas” is something that painting teacher Elio Camacho told me over and over again when I started painting details in a scene before I had the big shapes blocked in. After messing up a painting yesterday by getting lost in the tiny details too soon, I really tried to focus on big shapes and color today.

I read this quote today that reaffirmed what I wrote in my last post about assimilating knowledge. It’s by Marques de Lozoya in the book Joaquin Sorolla by Blanca Pons-Sorolla:

“There is a moment in every artist’s career which usually follows many years of strenuous effort, in which experiences are accumulated in an intuition of marvelous clarity; the artist’s vision becomes precise and clear; the paths that lead to success are firmly perceived and easily and happily pursued, without any effort at all…”

Sounds good, doesn’t it! It gives me hope. I’d occasionally felt that intuition, clarity and happiness with watercolor and I look forward to finding it with oils too. At least I’m more frequently understanding where I’ve gone wrong.

Click “continue reading” below to see the steps I took for this study today. (If the link isn’t visible below, just click on the image above and you can see the steps on Flickr.

Blake Gardens Redwoods & Assimilating

Oil on panel, 10″x8″ (larger)

I’ve been playing hooky from my blog, while trying to assimilate what I learned at my painting workshop last week. (I checked Websters‘ online dictionary to make sure assimilate was the word I meant to use and it was perfect:

Assimilate:
a: to take in and utilize as nourishment: absorb into the system
b: to take into the mind and thoroughly comprehend

Friday when I was painting with my plein air group at Blake Gardens I felt like I was on the verge of a breakthrough. But I was shocked when I moved out of the shady grove where I was working to join the group for critique. I’d been in the “zone” while painting, feeling really good about my work but in the bright light it looked awful.

I put another two hours into it at home and liked it much better. Here are pics of the steps along the way:

Blah photo of the scene:

Initial blocking in of the big shapes, remembering my teacher’s saying: “You can tame a wild stallion but you can’t bring a dead horse back to life” — so start with vibrant color (while still trying to get the right temperature and value) and then tame it.

After two hours plein air:

Mothers’ Day Bouquet Snippet

Ink & watercolor 5.5″x3.25″ (larger)

I’m back from my week-long workshop with Camille Przewodek in Petaluma. It was a powerful learning experience and an incredible opportunity two learn from two masters, Camille and her husband Dale Axelrod.  They studied for many years with Henry Hensche at the Cape Cod School of Art and are carrying on and expanding upon Hensche’s and Hawthorne’s work with color and light.

We painted in beautiful scenic locations from wetland marshes to the quaint village of Nicasio and the last day painted four models by the river that runs alongside Camille’s studio in charming and historic downtown Petaluma. We also did Hensche’s traditional colored block studies. All painting was done outdoors in bright sunlight and the weather couldn’t have been better.

I’ll write more about what I learned at the workshop when my paintings are dry and easier to handle, photograph and post.  In the meantime, here’s just a corner of the huge Mothers Day bouquet my son Cody surprised me with before we went to Brushstrokes Studio, a cute little pottery painting place in Berkeley. Cody and I decorated catfood bowls while his significant other designed a beautiful cup and daughter M painted a plate with a beach scene as a memorial for her grandmother who recently passed away. Then it was off to Pyramid Brewery for a yummy Mothers Day dinner accompanied by refreshing Pyramid Hefeweizen Ale served with a wedge of lemon.

Beauty Parlor Still Life

Ink and watercolor, 9×6 (larger)

This was my view while I was getting my hair cut on Friday. The beautiful peonies were an apology gift to my hairdresser from one of her clients. I don’t know what the client had done wrong but I thought the combination of the scissors, hairbrush and flowers made an interesting still life.

I’m going to be in a painting workshop all week with Camille Przewodek in Petaluma and may not have a chance to post until I return. It should be an exciting and intense week of painting. It’s also a vacation from work (whoopee) and I intend to enjoy every moment!

Worked late, missed train, got to draw

Larger

Once everyone left the office I could finally concentrate on a complicated project. By the time I finished and headed out it was nearly 8:00 p.m. I arrived at the BART station just as my train was pulling away and the flashing sign said it would be 20 minutes until the next one. I was exhausted, hungry and alone on the platform with nothing to do.

Within a few minutes, more late commuters began to arrive, sit down and kill time. I grabbed my sketchbook and the 20 minutes flew by. I drew the people above while waiting (felt pen added at home because I liked the negative space) and the folks below on the train ride home.

Larger

Firehoses on 5th Ave (Oakland)

Ink & watercolor (Larger)

Saturday I painted wtih the East Bay Plein Air Painters at the foot of 5th Avenue in Oakland. It’s an amazing little enclave of funky art studios, rusty old boats in a beat-up marina, and industrial buildings not far from Jack London Square.

I arrived very late, being unable to push myself this weekend to move quickly or arise early. I did this one little watercolor sketch sitting in the hot sun and took a lot of photos. I was fascinated by the many varieties of fire extinguisher equipment on all the old waterfront shacks (I’m easily amused, I suppose) and painted the oil below from one of the photos I took on Saturday, working from the image displayed on my computer screen.

Oil on panel, 8×6″ (Larger)

Here’s a photo from the 5th Avenue Marina, or, as it says in the photo, the “Oakland Riviera”:

Click image to enlarge and see the soldiers on the missile. I’ll be posting more of my photos and paintings from 5th Avenue soon.

Roses - Kerchoo!

Oil on panel, 14×11″ (larger)

These roses were making me sneeze. I’d set up the still life last Monday and then ran out of time on the painting and left it set up all week. When I finally got back to painting today, the studio smelled like like a perfume factory. That might be a pleasant experience if I wasn’t allergic and didn’t dislike strong scents, especially roses.

My goal for this painting was to be loose, work quickly, trying to get some of the freedom I experience with my line drawing and watercolor wash, while secondarily trying to pay attention to color and light.

Here are the steps along the way: (to see the steps, please click “Continue Reading” below)