Over the years I’ve sketched my son lounging with a book many times. I admire the way he fills the couch with his relaxed limbs and comfortable presence. I wanted to capture that feeling with this painting.
I usually paint on half of a large sheet of paper, but this time I used all 20 x 30 inches (50 x 75 centimeters) of a Stonehenge Black Watercolor sheet. It is great to look across the room and see my son sprawled across it.
It has been hot everywhere around San Diego, even up at the Laguna Mountains, which are at 5,000 feet elevation. I found the shadiest place to stand that I could and looked around for a subject from that vantage point. There was a bit of blue sky, mostly hidden, through the trees and I focused on that.
Our Zoom model tonight was a pleasure to sketch. His poses were out of the norm and lent themselves to distortion. In this case, he leaned forward on his hands, keeping his long arms straight while he tucked his even longer legs up under the seat of a stool.
I painted directly on my paper without first drawing, and was pleased with the fresh, gesture – like feel it created.
My son and husband were having fun talking about something while I casually sketched them from across the room. I was charmed by their animated faces and relaxed bodies as they discussed the idea at hand. Their body language clearly communicated that they thought their idea was intriguing and I worked to capture that feeling with this gouache sketch.
I started this last week when I was painting up in the Lagunas, about an hour east of San Diego. Like many such paintings, it was not quite finished when it was time to leave. This morning, I added the suggestion of small plants in the foreground and now it feels finished to me.
This gouache painting is on a quarter sheet of Stonehenge black watercolor paper. I like the way the paper handles wet paint and absorbs it deep into the grain of the paper, yet supports the dry paint in staying on the surface of the page.
A few days ago I painted my neighbor’s palm tree, and here are three more sketches of it.
We went up into the Laguna Mountains east of San Diego for an afternoon of hiking and painting. The campgrounds are all closed because of coronavirus, but the hiking trails are open. We walked a mile or so along a gorgeous path, feeling the forest around us. At the top of a hill we suddenly had a view of the water and cell towers above the path and our fellow hikers. The incongruity of it all reminded me of Simon Stalenhag’s art, and I had to give his style a try.
Deliberate Sketching 