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.
For some time I have considered the possibility of doing two studies for each painting, one in watercolor and the other in gouache. Today’s painting is exactly that. I took the same study in gouache (yesterday) and painted it in watercolor. It was a really interesting experience!
First, I am doing all these studies in a 7×10 sketchbook. The paper is not really good for really wet watercolors, but is very nice for gouache. Knowing this, I kept my paper as unsaturated as possible, but also worked to use wet-in-wet where I thought necessary, such as in the sky and fog bank, but being very careful about the amount of water I used. In other areas I did small, quick forays into wet work, but kept it to a minimum while allowing for bleeds, or coming back to work a bit more, such as on the right side where the grasses are in contrast to the road (lower right side).
Problems continue with depth. The middle ground hills and the ones against the fog are muddled into each other. While I made things simpler in the distance, the colors remain the same in intensity. Atmospheric perspective needs a bit of boost in this one.
Look forward to more of these studies.
The California coast depends on the fog that rolls in from the Pacific during the late spring and summer – and other times of the year, probably – for its ecology. Plants collect the damp of the fog as a primary water source, and at times it makes the coastal areas, and inland valleys, rather damp and dreary.
Here, we call it “May Grey” and “June Gloom” and “The Fog Monster” – and believe me, when you live in a coastal city in July, and the sky is cold and damp, you cannot help but agree with Mark Twain when he said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
You see the coastal fog rolling over the foothills toward the inland valleys. I tried to simplify my palette and fields of color to suggest distance. The sun is coming from the viewer’s right, so I also worked to make it evident on the distant hills. I used a lot of dry brush in the foreground, and basically worked from top to bottom so that the distant layers would be overlaid by the middle and foreground. The only thing that wasn’t quite in that sequence were the fence posts. Once they were established, dry brush to represent grasses was employed.
Even though summer is moving through July, soon into August, the rains we had over the spring are still leaving waves of color in the hills of the California back country. Usually at this time of year beige is the predominant color, and in really dry years, a dark dirty brown. This summer is a delight of colors – pale compared to spring – with wildflowers still hidden amongst the grasses.
