Our online Tuesday still life group painted two beautiful papaya halves on a breakfast tray. I liked my sketch but felt my composition needed something more, and today I painted in the azaleas and blue vase over the second papaya half.
We went to paint at the Old Mission Dam in San Diego’s Mission Trails Park. The sky was cloudy, the San Diego River was flowing, and there was a lot of movement in the sky and water, which I caught well enough to be satisfied. There was also a steep hill rising several hundred feet. It was a gorgeous morning, and I painted happily away.
Unhappily though, the painting did not do justice to the scene. The hill as I originally painted it was large, static, dominating, and wrong. After some thought, I lowered the sky, replaced much of the hill with yellow grassland, and made it curve and move a bit into the sky. I like this much better, but it is no longer a view of the landscape at the Old Mission Dam.
Azaleas mean spring is here again, hooray! And don’t they look great with a philodendron leaf in a blue vase?
I liked the jumble of placemats, flowers, and shadows on the dining room table, so I sat there and quickly sketched it.
It is Tuesday, which means it is still-life painting on Zoom. Tonight we painted an amaryllis along with several philodendron leaves. I like a shapely philodendron leaf because its irregular border and empty spaces are so much fun to draw.
Our Tuesday night still-life group met online, and we were quickly engrossed and painting away. The pot was tilted on its side and I spent forever trying to get the angles of the mouth and sides to look right. I had an easier time with my color decisions as the scene was perfect for gouache on raw sienna-tinted Colourfix paper. I let the raw sienna show in the horizontal stripe in the background and in parts of the pot.
Saturday, we went out to Lakeside for the monthly paintout with the San Diego Watercolor Society. Shuang Li gave a terrific demo, and then we all painted.
It was such a beautiful day, full of irresistible subjects, clouds, boulders, fresh green meadows, fences, horses, vistas, and farm equipment. I decided to focus on the boulders and got to work. Soon, though, my sketch was bursting with all the loveliness of the spring morning, and I ended up with a cluttered mess.
Today I tried again. No beautiful fence that zig zags across the meadow, no majestic clouds, no terraced fields, but a much more pleasing painting.
Deliberate Sketching 