Our group went down to San Diego’s Tuna Harbor Park and spent the morning painting. The Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum is adjacent and pretty much dominates the view from the edge of the harbor. I liked the shape of the ship against the sea and painted it.
Sunset Cliffs, along San Diego’s shoreline, always has a grand vista for a painter. Its elevation gives broad views, and its warm sandstone formations contrast nicely with the sea. Sometimes, it also offers a roiling sea, as was the case this week.
I mostly used a fan brush to suggest the turmoil of the sea and the layers of the sandstone. The effect was fairly abstract, and for a while, I thought about adding definition to the cliffs. In the end, I decided that I liked the mystery and so left it as I painted it.
Here are the other three still-life sketches from my Zoom sketching group. These scenes featured objects on a table.
Somehow I am behind in posting. I am going to post my recent sketches by topic so I can catch up.
In August, my Tuesday evening Zoom group shifted to still lives, at first due to lack of models but later because the subject matter grabbed us. These pieces are from the two evenings that our setup featured flowers.
The medium in first two is a combination of gouache and chalk markers on black Bristol paper. The time was early evening and there were shafts of light that moved through the scene as the sun lowered. I think this first sketch below catches the idea of evening light better, but I like the second one more because the swath of black paper sets off the flowers.
Fast forward a month, and the artist responsible for setting up that week was getting more creative and free. This scene had two plaster casts of her feet from art school. She placed the feet around a vase of flowers on a crumpled tablecloth.
As I worked on the first, smaller piece, I realized how much I loved the interplay of all that wonderful line. So I emphasized the lines in the second version by skipping the color in the tablecloth and leaving more black paper visible.
Both of the following sketches are made with gouache on black Bristol paper. The first is 9 x 9 inches and the second is 13 x 13 inches.
Yesterday morning I sketched with the San Diego Urban Sketchers at Liberty Station. The water was calm and there were many paddle boaters out on the water.
I met up with friends to paint at San Diego’s Shelter Island. This time of year, the sun is hot, and we pretty much need to stand in the shade when painting. I was in the shadows of the next tree over and about to paint the harbor. Then I noticed the adjacent group. Although they huddled under the same tree, each artist was turned and capturing a different slice of the surroundings. I thought their positions said something interesting about the group’s individuality. I also liked this scene because it conveys our local story of loving to be outside painting even as we do our best to stay hidden from the sun
Our younger child, David, has a birthday today. I wanted to celebrate by making a card that says something about who he has become in these last 38 years. The enormity of summarizing a complex and wonderful human on a single card nearly did me in. Eventually, though, I got to thinking about how his work brings him such pleasure and how accomplished he is. So I drew him at the computer and overlaid the screen with code and images that I hope convey blockchains. The next part, giving David’s face the expression it gets when an idea charms him, was harder, but eventually, I got one that I thought was true to him. Finally, I made a background with a hint of a graph since graphing goes with data crunching. Then I had the fun of including his age and a toss of confetti, in a nod to those childhood birthday cards.
Happy Birthday Dear David!
