Waiting For My Turn

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan
Waiting for My Turn

This particular model, Fantasia, is one of my favorites. Generally, before I draw people, I look to see what I think the subject is feeling and then I work to convey that meaning as well as her looks. Fantasia puts so much complex emotion into her poses that it is a delight to paint her. Today I thought that Fantasia had a wistful look and I think this painting captures that feeling.

I have been meaning to include more of what I learned at the Stan Kurth workshop from earlier this month but I am so uncertain of how it might look that I have been putting it off. But today is the day I finally braved it and added some geometric shapes to the piece. Funny how hard it can be to do something a little bit outside your comfort zone.

This is a mixed media painting. I began with black bristol board and gave it a coat of burnt sienna casein. I drew on it with yellow pastel and ink and painted with gouache.

Posted in Body Language, Story Creation | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Crystal Pier on a Quiet Morning

Posted on February 27, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan
Crystal Pier on a Quiet Morning

Crystal Pier is an iconic San Diego landmark and very occasionally a quiet location. This Wednesday winter morning was one of those quiet times. The tide was out, the surf was gentle, the fog had not lifted, and the weather was chilly. I arrived at the beach planning to paint exuberantly, as I had yesterday, but serenity, not exuberance, was the mood of the morning.

My eye was drawn to the greens and purples in the sky and sea. I was indecisive about including the pier, since it is so visually dominating, but went with it because of the delightful wedge it made against the sea and fog bank. I added the suggestion of figures in the lower right to add some balancing weight to the composition.

This is a 16 X 12-inch gouache painting.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Gordon Shows Us How He Paints

Posted on February 26, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan
Gordon Shows Us How He Paints

I admire the exuberance and humor in the paintings of a local artist, Gordon Bashant. He uses primary colors, black outlines, calligraphy, strong values, and halos. It gives his work a boisterous happy feeling that I would like my own work to have. When I heard Gordon was giving a demonstration of his working process, I was excited.

I brought the required materials but unfortunately missed the part about bringing a photo reference as a starting point for my own painting. But finding a subject was not hard, after all, Gordon was standing right in front of us. So I just painted Gordon as he demonstrated. But I tried to paint him using his style since that is what he was teaching us.

This is a gouache, watercolor, and ink painting on a half sheet of rough watercolor paper.

Posted in Learning, Telling a Story | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

News of the Snowstorm

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan

Pen and Wash Sketch of a Woman Reading

News of the Snowstorm

I am visiting my sisters in Prescott Arizona and we have been treated to sixteen inches of snow. We stayed inside in the morning and read about the storm, sketched and played scrabble.

I had trouble conveying the mounds of snow outside, perhaps a little watercolor would help make it clearer.

Posted in Interior | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Eucalyptus Grove in the Rain

Posted on February 18, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan

Eucalyptus Grove in the Rain

My cousin Ann Lewis, who is an amazing plein air painter, visited me this past weekend. The weather was stormy but with only three days to paint together, we could not let the wild weather stop us from going out and painting. We went to four different sites and had our easels blown over, our paintings rained on, and a tremendous amount of fun. It was great to paint so closely with such a creative artist and a kindred spirit.

One of the places we painted was a eucalyptus grove at Balboa Park. If you look at the painting above, you can see watermarks that the raindrops made as I scurried back to the car during a cloudburst. This is my favorite from the weekend because I like the composition and reds. It is a 12 X 18-inch gouache painting.

Posted in Landscape | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Intuitive Painting

Posted on February 14, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan

Intuitive Painting

I just finished a four-day workshop on intuitive painting with the Arizona artist, Stan Kurth. Above are three of my favorite paintings that I did during the workshop.

We learned to develop paintings intuitively. Not from life, not from a plan, but by allowing an image to develop as you place marks on paper. You begin by putting down random marks with pencils, pens, crayons, markers, watercolor, gouache, acrylic paint, and so on, until you see something in all your marks that might suggest an idea. This part seemed like looking at clouds and seeing elephants or ducks. Once you see a shape, you develop the idea further with more marks, taking care to leave lots of ambiguity about its meaning. You should also think about the elements and principles of design so that the final painting is pleasing to the eye.

When I started this blog nearly four years ago, I had hoped to become able to visually convey what I saw and thought about. Although this is still a major goal for me, I would also like to be able to paint more abstractly. This workshop has been wonderful because it gave me a process for one type of abstract art. This week I will see if I can use these techniques when I am painting plein air.

Each of these mixed media paintings is 22 x 15-inches.

Posted in Deliberate Practice | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Spring at EL Monte County Park

Posted on February 9, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan

Gouache sketch of mountains above El Monte Park in San DIego area

Spring at El Monte Park

I drove 40-minutes into the hills to El Monte County Park and painted the granite peaks above the valley floor. Although the spring shine gave a greenish cast to the area, the dominant feature was the rain runoff patterns down the mountainside. I had some trouble capturing it and finally used lines with a change in color to show it.

This is a 22 X 13-inch gouache painting.

Posted in Landscape | Tagged , , | 2 Comments