I sketched today at Balboa Park’s Desert Garden. It is a delightful place on top of the mesa, full of succulents and cactus. Unfortunately, there are no name plates so I am not confident that this is a yucca. Regardless, this particular plant captures my eye and I have now sketched it many times.
I got good a good start on this painting when I was over at Ramona Grasslands Preserve last Saturday, but I had to wait until today to finish it. This began as a bright morning scene with intense backlighting but somehow became more of a bright moonlight landscape.
I drove up to Cuyamaca Lake today with a friend where we painted. It was cold with a heavy sky and I liked the dark shapes that I saw along the edge of the forest.
This afternoon I went over to Lake Murray Park and painted for a few hours. The late afternoon light had a golden glow which was especially bright on the bark of the Eucalyptus trees along the shore. A woman and her small dog with a large tail came along and obliged me by admiring the view for a few minutes.
The last three days I have used paper that is about twice as long as it is wide. The first day I used it in landscape mode, these next two days in portrait. I like the way the portrait orientation suggests the majesty of nature.
This is a 6 X 12-inch gouache painting.
Torrey Pines State Reserve was a perfect place to paint this morning. I arrived expecting heavy fog but it had already moved out over the Pacific. As I thought about a vista to paint, my eyes kept looking over at my friend. I thought her silhouette and easel against the ocean was just gorgeous. So instead of a painting of the view from the West Overlook, this became a painting about an artist doing her best to capture beauty.
This is a 13 X 20- inch gouache and casein painting on heavy black bristol board.
The succulent garden at Balboa Park is a great place to paint this time of year. Succulents need a lot of sunshine so it can be uncomfortable to paint there during our warmer months. Now the weather is cool enough to make it much more inviting. The sky and mesa beyond this row of plants were spectacular in the morning light and I used very watery gouache to try to capture the feeling of the light and wind.
This morning I walked up the hill to San Diego State University and sketched one of my favorite views. You can stand on the northwest corner of the mesa and look out across it along the trolley tracks to the hills and sky. We had rain last week and the hills are already beginning to green up just a bit.
