The San Diego Watercolor Society painted today at the Trevi Hills Winery in Lakeside. This was our first large paintout in twenty-one months and something to celebrate.
The light was sharp and fierce, backlighting the olive trees, grapevines, and dried grasses. I remembered how much I like the combination of Quinacrine Violet and Yellow Ochre for suggesting backlit scenes, particularly when combined with light blues.
I was nearly finished when I noticed a few individuals helping each other pack up. I put them in the painting but am still uncertain about this call.
My Tuesday Zoom group continues to paint still-life scenes. After two months, I look forward to the challenge that this kind of subject provides.
I began this sketch by painting all the basic shapes directly on black paper with gouache. Then I enhanced the sketch by drawing over the gouache with a black chalk marker. I think I see the influence of my recent trip to the Grand Canyon in how I treated the shapes and colors of the vase and of the linens.
Our group went down to San Diego’s Tuna Harbor Park and spent the morning painting. The Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum is adjacent and pretty much dominates the view from the edge of the harbor. I liked the shape of the ship against the sea and painted it.
Sunset Cliffs, along San Diego’s shoreline, always has a grand vista for a painter. Its elevation gives broad views, and its warm sandstone formations contrast nicely with the sea. Sometimes, it also offers a roiling sea, as was the case this week.
I mostly used a fan brush to suggest the turmoil of the sea and the layers of the sandstone. The effect was fairly abstract, and for a while, I thought about adding definition to the cliffs. In the end, I decided that I liked the mystery and so left it as I painted it.
Somehow I am behind in posting. I am going to post my recent sketches by topic so I can catch up.
In August, my Tuesday evening Zoom group shifted to still lives, at first due to lack of models but later because the subject matter grabbed us. These pieces are from the two evenings that our setup featured flowers.
The medium in first two is a combination of gouache and chalk markers on black Bristol paper. The time was early evening and there were shafts of light that moved through the scene as the sun lowered. I think this first sketch below catches the idea of evening light better, but I like the second one more because the swath of black paper sets off the flowers.
Fast forward a month, and the artist responsible for setting up that week was getting more creative and free. This scene had two plaster casts of her feet from art school. She placed the feet around a vase of flowers on a crumpled tablecloth.
As I worked on the first, smaller piece, I realized how much I loved the interplay of all that wonderful line. So I emphasized the lines in the second version by skipping the color in the tablecloth and leaving more black paper visible.
Both of the following sketches are made with gouache on black Bristol paper. The first is 9 x 9 inches and the second is 13 x 13 inches.
Deliberate Sketching 