El Cajon Mountain

Posted on March 13, 2022 by Sarah Sullivan

I went out to El Monte Park in Lakeside, California, with the San Deigo Watercolor Society for our monthly paintout. Although it is only 20 miles away, the feel of the area is of mountainous desert and it is very inviting to painters. El Cajon Mountain lifts straight up from the valley floor and dominates the view from the park.

Capturing a steep mountain strewn with cliffs, boulders, and foliage requires a lot of simplification. I decided on a low horizon and a minimal sky, leaving most of the paper for the mountain itself. The decision to have only a tiny strip of foreground left very little space for indicating that it was a beautiful spring day. After some indecision, I went with a sweep of green across the valley floor and guessed that this would work.

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A Perky Little Bush

Posted on March 11, 2022 by Sarah Sullivan

A few weeks ago, we took a trip up through Northern California. There was some snow which is always a treat for this Southern Californian.

While sitting in our camper, I looked out the window and saw the shapes of two bushes alongside a building. I liked how the perky bush in front was set off by the rise of the hill behind it and the taller bush and wall.

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Broom Closet

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Sarah Sullivan

One good thing about my broom closet is the bright red bucket, which always catches my eye when I go near it.

Yesterday was my turn to set up our Tuesday night Zoom sketching group. I spent the day looking around my house with an eye for selecting various sizes, shapes, textures, and values. Would it be veggies, vases, draperies, or toys? Then, in the midst of a quick cleanup, I saw my subject and recreated the broom closet scene close to my computer’s camera.

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Down at the Harbor

Posted on March 4, 2022 by Sarah Sullivan

I went down to the Embarcadero to paint San Diego’s historical boats at the Maritime Museum. There were eight or ten of them representing different eras, from sailing ships through submarines. None of them were decked out in pastels, but somehow these colors suited the morning.

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Palm Canyon’s Ferns, Roots, and Trees

Posted on February 20, 2022 by Sarah Sullivan

Palm Canyon, in San Diego’s Balboa Park, is multi-level. There is a place you can stand by the roots of a great banyan tree and look across to a pedestrian bridge that goes over it as well and look down on the canyon floor below at the same time. A fantastic jumble of aerial roots, ferns, palms, and thin tree trunks fill the canyon floor and stretch up towards the banyan trees. Its complexity is mesmerizing, and I wanted to capture this feeling with this painting.

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A Walk at Leo Carrillo Park

Posted on February 13, 2022 by Sarah Sullivan

Saturday, I painted at Leo Carrillo Park, along with others from the San Diego Watercolor Society. The park features an historic California-style rancho, complete with buildings, gardens, tools, and animals. I liked the contrast of the flat, dusty dirt roads to the tall green mountains and wanted to capture the feeling of walking along a country road.

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Ready to Cook

Posted on February 11, 2022 by Sarah Sullivan

My friend set up a still life on her kitchen table for our Tuesday night Zoom group. It included an old cookbook, ‘The Joy of Cooking,’ so well used that the cover has been missing for years. One of the other artists reminisced about making butterscotch bars from it as a child, page 78, she thought. And suddenly, I was filled with nostalgia for the days when my sisters and I raced home from school and made treats from scratch. I think some of my nostalgia transferred into this painting.

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