India ink, watercolor, sketchbook. Wildcat Beach is one of the most beautiful beaches along the California coast, and what makes it interesting is not only do you see the ocean, you see the other side of peninsula, more water, and you want to wander along its top, and on the shore, or sail around. There is a lot of mystery here, beauty on a sunny day, strange and eerie in the fog and mist of the summer coast.
Watercolor is wet. It needs to dry. In a studio setting or classroom, a lot of people use hair dryers. You see it on videos all the time – brrrrrrr! But, outdoors, unless you have an outlet and a long extension cord, and want to annoy yourself, you just sit and wait for air and evaporation to get to work.
I opened up my big sketchbook – each page is about 9×12 inches – and it was a spread across the two sheets. Above, a more traditionally done sketchy watercolor. I did a basic pencil drawing and then applied color.
Last month we drove from north of Los Angeles out to Tucson for our Global Entry interviews. En route we drove through portions of the southwest I have not yet seen, driving east from San Diego along Hwy 8, at times just north of the Mexican border. The land was sparse and beautiful in a fierce way, and before we reached Tucson we drove through the Sonoran Desert, home of the mighty saguaro cactus.
What can I say? They are tall and strange, reaching upwards to 40 feet, with arms and branches against mountains and skies filled with drama. It was beautiful. As we were on a long drive – 8.5 hours – we didn’t stop. I took a bunch of lousy pictures out of the window, and these are the basis for the above painting. An impression, not a reality, although you know these are saguaro if you have ever seen one.
This painting had to be painted in stages, so my thoughts were what to do while waiting? I decided to do some direct watercolor and use a photo I had taken of the local landscape.
Direct watercolor has no lines, and I have found it a wonderfully fresh way to see the world and to paint. It is also a challenge not to make mud, not to get carried away, and to think strategically. For me, the real challenges are negative painting and values. Because I am making sketches in a sketchbook and not something “serious” on a sheet of expensive paper, the direct watercolor and the more traditional studies are gaining traction.
I am learning a thing or two in my old age, and there is something to be said for that. Today’s painting was very satisfying. I spent it outside at the picnic table, a few supplies, a dog at my feet, and a kicked-back-who-gives-a-damn approach. And, I don’t think either of these paintings is half bad.
Software updates and new versions come out on a regular basis. If you are diligent, you learn the newer versions and discard the old by uninstalling them. Sometimes the newer versions have features added and older ones removed for this reason or that. Usually I just install things and play. Today I decided it was time to really get my proverbial s*** together with regards to Lightroom Classic CC and On1 Photo Raw 2023.
In Lightroom up to the 2021 version of Photo Raw I could use the different modules of On1’s software individually. After that, no. I decided to get into the 2023 release of Photo Raw and figure it out. The first thing I did was to import a bazillion of presets into Photo Raw 2023. That took easily a few hours. Each preset group had to be imported individually. Argh! Why batch imports cannot be done, I have no idea – may be it can be, but I have no idea how!!
Anyway, done with preset importing, I started trying to figure out how I could get the best usage out of my LR and Photo Raw 2023 to edit by exporting an image from LR to Photo Raw. I found a great video, for Photo Raw 2022, not with the individual modules as before, but it works.
If you have struggled with LR and On1, this presents a viable option. It is not as good as the individual modules of the 2021 and earlier versions of Photo Raw, but it works. There are ways to batch edit in both LR and On1, and I do need to learn those as well.
While I was playing with On1 Photo Raw 2023, I started exploring the sky replacement element. It is really fun! Of course, you need to have some sense of matching the sky with the photo or it can look odd, but there are some adjustments it seems that you can make while importing a sky into a photo – ones that adjust the foreground for instance. If you have water, you can put in a reflection. You can also expand and shrink your new sky to a degree, as well as move the horizon and so on. Again, more study is needed.
And here is just one of the pictures I played with. Below is one with an original sky – I downloaded it from Pixabay, a website with a lot of free photos for use. Per the description, this is taken in Malibu, CA. Those clouds are not common here – winter storms are usually when we see them.
And here it is with a tornado and rain – not something you are likely to see here in California unless the world really changes!
And that is how I spent today – updating photo software, playing around, and trying to join the 21st century with AI and photography. I like the sky thingy – has potential.
And now – dinner and a walk and something other than computers . . .
Yesterday afternoon I did a lot of sewing and running around to the point I so tired of the house and machines and tasks that the best thing to do was run away.
I do that a lot.
At about 5 p.m. I decided to snag the Canon G7X Mark II as all I wanted was a point and shoot and a brisk hike along a trail with trees and rocks and bugs and poison oak. It was perfect! The hills beyond the little canyon where the trail is were still covered with golds and lavender from this past winter’s rain, and alongside the trail was a profusion of mustard, monkey flower, salvia, penstemon, sunflowers and a number of flowers I don’t know. For two hours I ran around, ignoring my wifely duties of dinner (we had leftovers, so J. was fine!) and getting my mind elsewhere.
Too easy to forget about the natural world when the unnatural one demands so much time. The shade, light, sun, shadows, were not simple to get in a photo, and the colors just got burnt out in the glare or lost in the dark. In the end, a black and white with lots of subtlety seemed the best way to express the beauty of the hike.
We spent a weekend in the wine country of the central coast in California . . . .
Ink, Yarn & Beer 