I sketched by Zoom with the Fresno group this evening. Our model, an older gentleman, dressed in a flowing outfit of gorgeous reds. I loved how he sat back in his recliner, letting the red steal the show.
I sketched this musician during a Zoom session last week, but needed to go back and finish up. She was a lovely young woman with slender limbs and she held her guitar in a way that made me know it was important to her. Although she was actually sitting inside on a couch, there was something about her that reminded me of singing in groups during the warm summer nights of my youth.
I painted for a few hours this morning at Balboa Park. I looked East toward Florida Canyon and admired all the dry desert vegetation with its dusty grays, browns, and greens. But most of all, I admired the runners who were zipping up and down the canyon trails.
Last month in Arizona, I painted the horses that were pastured nearby, but they always looked a little wrong. So today I studied my photos and noticed that horses have longer necks, larger head and thinner legs than the ones I drew.
Then I spent the afternoon finishing up some of the paintings with horses that I started on my Arizona trip last month. I liked this sketch overall, but the original horses were poorly drawn. Now after adjusting the three horses in this sketch to make them better proportioned, I just need to make them less awkward, more relaxed, and more connected to the background.
Last Sunday I was at Balboa Park and got a pretty good start on this sketch. This evening I pulled it out and finished it up with shadows and figures.
I went out to Glorietta Bay on nearby Coronado Island and began to paint, thinking that the mid morning fog would lift and the sea and sky would turn into glorious blues. As you can see, I was mistaken. Even so, the day did not disappoint as I was able to sketch some of the many people who were out and about enjoying a break from our heat wave.
Including people in a landscape painting continues to challenge me. So often they look added on, rather than organically part of the scene.
Our model tonight with the Fresno sketching Zoom group was an expressive young woman named Natalie. During a break she asked us for our guess about when the pandemic and precautions might end.
After Natalie’s question, her body language seemed to take on an air of resignation, and I worked to emphasize this attitude by making her mouth pursed and her eyes look off to the right a bit more that they really were.
Deliberate Sketching 