Farms in California are a bit different than what I remember as a kid in the Midwest and out on the plains. The land along the coast is gentle and low lying. The ocean brings in mist and fog, creating at times a dreamy, otherworldly quality that is soft and ethereal. Fog comes and goes, scenery appears and vanishes. Colors can be pale or deeply rich depending on light and cloud.
Evidence of overworking is present in the white highlights . . . they just don’t seem to go with the rest of the painting insofar they are too bright. I was thinking in terms of photography and histograms – white point, black point. I wonder if I am criss-crossing two different art formats. Besides that, the rocks are perhaps too orange for the distant sky, although sandstone can take on an incredibly orangish color under the right light.
Hmmmmm.
I went off for a morning walk in the local botanical garden, taking pictures with my phone (and film camera) looking for contrasty bits of landscape to paint. I took a lot, much to my surprise. What I found was dappled sunlight more than anything as the garden is in its summer glory with trees leafed out and bright sun trying to break through the canopy.
Truthfully, this painting is considerably more lush in color than the photo as we are in August, in hot weather, and the vegetation has dried and browned from a lack of rain. I really worked to create a gouache painting reflective of the photo, but couldn’t hack it! It was so dreary!
What I did like best, though, was simply the experience of a slow ramble through the garden. There were birds, scents of pine and sage, butterflies, the buzz of bees, bird song, caws from crows. I think, perhaps, the painting is more reflective of the richness of the experience of the garden rather than its current shades of beige, brown, and green.
The Channel Islands off the coast of California are amazing to visit. Only recently (don’t remember when) they became a national park, to protect both the islands and their flora and fauna, as well as to protect the waters surrounding them. Anacapa is a very distinctive island. It has an arch on one end, and zig-zags, snakelike, as it emerges from the water. I have visited this island, both on the land, and in a boat sailing around. It’s a truly lovely place, one worth visiting, painting, exploring, and photographing.
Here, I finished up using the available paints on my muddy palette. The final painting with that mess! As with yesterday’s painting, I have added white to the palette for colors, but for the most part, these are colors salvaged from the mess on the palette.
Truth be told, I really did not expect this painting to turn out at all. My colors were just such a mess. I simplified everything as much as I could. I managed to get some sense of depth, which also surprised me!
I have a fear of painting people. I cannot even imagine doing a portrait. For the past several days I have been debating on deliberately focusing on people or buildings and perspective. Guess what won?
As with many of my paintings, this is from an image on Pixabay. A girl is lying face down on white sheets; she wears a grey T-shirt and her face is not visible. It would be easy to try to put in facial features and overwork a picture, and this is why I chose such an anonymous person.
At this point, I am simply looking at proportion, light, dark, shadows. In general, this worked out okay – the right hand is a bit off, but that is not what I was aiming for. I worked to keep everything simple, as well as use up paint on my muddy palette. I added zinc white, of which I am using a ton, as that has been missing from the muddy palette for weeks!
Ink, Yarn & Beer 