From our balcony and my admiring eyes.
The set-up lat night was from a different time that we all remembered-rotary phones, Yellow Pages, and long evenings without media.
The last time I painted at San Dieguito Lagoon, it was a bright, sparkling day. I hoped for a similar day yesterday so I could paint shimmering water; however, it was overcast with a very light drizzle, and the tide was out!
As I was looking around, I noticed a tiny house up on a rise between two beautiful old pine trees. The harmony between the trees, house, and location caught my eye and I tried my hand at painting its tranquility. Now I can’t wait for another drizzly day to go back and paint it again.
Although I often paint figures, I am confused about how to place several into a landscape so that their relative sizes are believable. So I was happy when I saw that Peggi Kroll Roberts was offering a three session online class addressing just this issue and have been happily completing her exercises.
The Thursday plein air painters met at the galleries in Spanish Village, a place popular with tourists and artists, and a perfect place to practice placing people into a landscape using one-point perspective as a guide. Unfortunately, the two figures on the right side grew a few inches as I painted, but even so, I think overall, the figures are believable. Next, I need to make them more lively!
What a great idea this is for breakfast tomorrow! Unfortunately, it is a scene we painted during tonight’s online Tuesday night still-life. I especially loved painting the pattern of the tablecloth.
This week’s Tuesday night still-life was challenging. I liked the pattern the strawberries made on the cutting board. Still, I had trouble initially because I painted each strawberry separately and emphasized the grain on the cutting board, which was distracting. The sketch read better once I connected the strawberries into an S-shape and removed most of the cutting board’s grain.
We visited friends down the street for dinner. Even better than the delicious meal was seeing three generations of women working together to put the meal on the table, the most senior at the stove, the youngest counting out and placing silverware on the table, and the middle woman doing everything in between. It was a treat to feast on a meal so warmly prepared.
Deliberate Sketching 