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.
After a week of rain, it was spring today in San Diego. I went over to Torrey Pines expecting to paint the sea, but the tide was so high that the beach was closed. Instead, I painted a view of the lagoon and its surrounding greenery.
This is a 12 X 12- inch gouache painting.
This small abstract of the landscape near Los Peñasquitos was done on white watercolor paper that I had prepared ahead of time with a stripe across the bottom of yellow ochre casein. When I was at Los Peñasquitos, I used gouache and then a black Inktense pencil to complete the painting.
It is interesting to compare how differently the gouache adheres to the casein than to the untreated paper.
This morning I sketched with the San Diego Watercolor Society. It is not obvious, but each of the sketches above is based on the same creative model. She had a magenta scarf, and wrapped it around her head, wore it as a skirt, and slung it over her shoulder. My goal for the day was to show the form of the model with long brushstrokes.
I went to the cactus garden at Balboa Park expecting to paint cactus. Instead, I was taken by a school group learning about public gardens.
I watched them awhile and liked the way the students leaned forward as they listened to their teacher. From time to time I could hear the students asking questions or laughing gently. The group seemed unusually tight-knit, and I wanted to capture this feeling in my painting. I made some small changes to the garden to strengthen the message of unity by extending the boughs of the trees over their heads and making the hillside seem steeper than it really was. I placed the group right in the middle, so their cohesiveness was echoed by the support of the hill and the protection of the trees.
I set up this still life to explore using gouache with Inktense pencils. I wanted to work with both smooth and textured surfaces and a limited palette so I would not be distracted by lots of color choices. I put a small Christmas cactus on the table with a bright light coming down from above and then used gouache to put in the big shapes of the pot, saucer, plant, and light. After the gouache was well dried, I used a pencil to draw the outlines of the objects. Then with Inktense pencils, I put color on the cactus, the dirt, saucer, and foreground. After dissolving the pencil marks with a water brush, I went back with more gouache to add more light values to portions of the pot and saucer.
I appreciate the variety of marks that were possible but think the colors in the cactus might have been richer with just gouache. My favorite parts are the texture marks on the saucer.
My sketching group had a model this morning who was quite expressive. Towards the end, she picked up an umbrella and had fun channeling our mixed feelings about our week of rain here in California.
I used my new Inktense pencils with gouache again today and had more success in using both together.
Deliberate Sketching 