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.
Today, I finally finished this painting from last week’s beach camping trip. My goal was to show the sea across the day, beginning in the morning and ending at night. The two daytime paintings have surfers in the ocean, and this one shifts to a nighttime campfire and moonlit sea. The sea was a dark blue in the morning, aqua in the afternoon, and neutral at night.
Unfortunately, I gave into the evening cold and retreated to the heated camper. So I did not finish while I could see the colors and shapes of the night. ‘Saturday Morning’ and ‘Saturday Afternoon’ have a spontaneity that ‘Saturday Evening’ lacks. Once it warms up, I will have to go back and try again!
During our recent camping trip, I painted several paintings from the same location along a bluff overlooking a popular surfing beach. Although I stood in the same spot and saw similar sights, the time of day made a considerable difference to the shades of blue. The previous post showed an early morning painting, and the sea had deep dark blues. Today’s painting was made in the early afternoon, and the overhead sun made the sea’s color seem more turquoise.
We camped for three days along the coast of Cardiff, about 20 miles north of San Diego. We had a spot high up on the bluff with a great view of the beach, surfers, sea, and sky. The textures and colors of the different layers, from the distant sea to the crashing waves, captivated me, and I did several pieces where I tried to capture it all.
Here is another composition with a mounded landmass rising to the top of a page. This scene shows the Geisel Library, a well-known landmark at the University of California at San Diego. It perches on a hilltop that showcases its incredible floors, angles, pitches, and slopes. Many people say the library looks like a spaceship coming in for a landing; others say it resembles a cluster of butterflies or hands holding books.
While I can see these illusions, I mostly notice that the library resembles a regal face, as is fitting since the Geisel Library is the King of all Libraries. I chose a corner view to paint from, where the building and hill resemble a king viewing his kingdom.
Recently, I have been taken by landmass rising to the top of a page in a circular sort of composition. These shapes dominate the San Diego landscape with its canyons, mesas, and bluffs and are perfect for showing the interplay of color and texture.
Today’s landscape is painted from near the same location as my January 12 post from Lake Murray. However, the weather today was mellow and very different from the cold wind earlier this month. The water is placid and reflective in this second painting, but the calmer weather made the textures of the foliage much more visible. It is interesting what a difference weather can make.
Both paintings are gouache on black watercolor paper, the earlier painting is on a half sheet of 140-pound Stonehenge Aqua Black, and today’s painting is on a 9 x 12 inch 300-pound Shizen paper. I also sprayed a light coat of Golden Archival Varnish on this second one, so it catches a bit of sparkle.
Here is a delicious sliced tomato, a delicious subject for a gouache painting on black paper, that is!
Deliberate Sketching 