Daily Painting

How delicious is the threat of rain....unless you're doing a watercolor. As my daughter said, "It'll be a watercolor then!" This was in downtown Campbell yesterday. The main attraction was the water tower, and most of the plein air group was camped out together, in a direct line from the water tower. I wanted a building in the foreground, and the water tower in the background. So, at the risk of cars coming and blocking me [which they did - right in front of me was a parking space], I planted myself in front of this building, and .... er .... shifted the location of the water tower so it was more where I wanted, rather than on top of the tree on the right. Two young women came by, appreciated my art, and said I should walk into Opa! and see if they would buy it. I was flattered, and how I wish I was more enterprising. Another woman asked me if I would sell it, but didn't offer to buy it :-( The water tower looks like it's about to land on Mo's. I need a...

I wanted to focus on a small area and concentrate on greens and all the textures in the foliage.  This was sketched in pen, and then watercolor. The purples in the rocks are complimentary to the greens.

This is a monochromatic boat study to keep out the distraction of colors, and simply deal with values in blacks/greys/whites. I need to do this every few months to remind myself of what is important.

This was done during a travel sketch class - again, plein air. I love plein air, in spite of the physical discomforts at times, the fact that I have to completely pack up my gear and move it a few feet away to do another painting, the lugging of all the stuff from home [not forgetting anything, especially a chair!, a hat, extra water...]. This was at Coyote Point Marina. This funky orange "thing" just sailed up to the pier - it is not a building, but a building-boat! It was so ugly that it was fascinatingly beautiful! It was truly orange in parts, and very striking. It was a grey day, which was made blue and happy to contrast with the orange parts, and I changed the dull grey pier posts to white, to lead the eye from the ramp to the building-boat-thingy.

Back to Emma Prusch Park. Architecture makes its way into my paintings, even though I try to find a scene without. The whites are what drew me to this scene - the fence and the stark white of the building in sunlight. This is the same building behind the red tractor last week. I like how the blue sky becomes the shadow side of the building. This drew me in as a panorama does the eye - the horizontal of the lush green field with the verticals of the trees, and the busyness of the road, traffic, and buildings in between the verticals. They say stop painting when your strokes are no longer making a difference. I should have stopped before the sky turned purple! This was done standing up, with a big brush, and very quickly....maybe 15 minutes.

Another lovely wheelie thing. The little hen was added at the last moment, and changed the scene absolutely. This was a rural, rustic scene at Emma Prusch Park in San Jose last Thursday, along with the plein air group. The tractor wheel perspective is off - the front two wheels appear to be in a plane on their own, unrelated to the back axle. Oh well. Must critique my sketch before wetting my brush. Or, I could claim it's an antique tractor, and that's the way they were made, once.