Near Barrett Junction. 3.5" x 9.5"

Along 94 near Barrett Junction. 4" x 9"

Along 94, 7" x 5". Three-minute sketch.

Watercolor really is a completely different language. With lots of dialects.

And now for something completely different

Honey Springs Rd at 94. 3.5" x 9"

Along 94, 3" x 5"

Exploration in watercolor.

Re-bedding the Lower Shroud Deck Plates

A year ago, I wouldn't have even known what that means. Now I actually know how it's done. Much more enjoyable to draw my husband while he's working on it, though. :)

Walnut ink, about 6x6" each. He was working, not posing, so these were done in 1 - 3 minutes each. Out of eighteen, these are some I like.

Recent

 Wildfires.

All small, from 8X10 to 4X5, oil on gessoed paper.  This last one is on dacron sail cloth, re-purposing a headsail that was destroyed in a windstorm.

Small ones

Quarry, 6 x 8", oil on paper






Camino del Dinero, 6 x 8", oil on paper

Change

11 X 14, oil on paper. North San Diego, beside the 56 bike path.  I think "subject to change" is a good name for a painting.

56 Bike Path

11 X 14 oil.  Subject to change, work in progress.

Boulders

 approx. 5 X 7" oil on paper

Vallecito Valley

Vallecito Stage Station Park along county S2, towards Ocotillo.  I passed this scene on my bike during the Stagecoach Century in 2010.  11 X 14 oil on gessoed BFK paper.

San Dieguito

11 X 14, oil on gessoed paper

14 x 11, oil on gessoed paper

Back to Work

Now that I live in a marine environment, what did I most want to paint once I got the oils back out of storage?  The desert, of course! Warmth and sunshine, and dry air.  These two studies were each done in 30 minutes, because my tendency after a layoff is to overthink.  A time limit results in a response to the scene, rather than an attempt to remember "rules" about how to paint.

Yaqui Pass, Anza Borrego.  11 X 14"  oil

Yaqui Pass 2, 14 X 11" oil

Home on the Ranger

We've lived aboard our Ranger 33 for three weeks now, and it has been intense. Some extreme highs and lows (like the tides, right?) but mostly good and truly exhilarating in ways that defy description.  Living on a boat puts one so close to the weather, as my husband has always said, and also incredibly close to all the life around us.  We can actually hear the fish through the hull.  We have toadfish here, who make a magical croaky humming sound that's only audible onboard the boat, every evening as we're going to sleep.  There are small shrimp that make a sound against the hull that's very similar to milk being poured on Rice Krispies.  Not to mention the bird life, varied and stunning.  We share the docks with several species of herons, who pretty much take over during the nighttime hours.  They're generally pretty tolerant of the humans, but when disturbed (quite often), they unleash quite a scolding.  Their beautiful presence is never unnoticed, in one form or another:

The boat itself is a work in progress, as they always are, which makes them a perfect metaphor for life and art.  And just as in artwork, simplification adds strength.  We've made the conscious decision to forgo any unnecessary complication.  No microwave, no hot water, minimal plumbing, a composting head instead of a holding tank.  The very fact of living in such a small space means that all possessions are carefully considered, and nothing superfluous comes aboard.

If it's true that the unexamined life is not worth living, then the ultra-examined life must be exceptionally worthwhile.  It feels that way to me.  I'll have some new work to post soon.

A couple earlier sketches...

Here are a couple small works that I never posted last fall when I did them.

Abstracted view of a saltwater marsh--started as an underpainting, but stopped at an interesting point.

6 X 8", gouache on paper

Young magnolia tree, plein air graphite, 6" X 4".

Big changes

Here's the biggest change:

It's a 1978 Ranger 33 sailboat.  Twenty two years ago when my husband and I were first married, we lived aboard his Ericson 30 sailboat for nearly a year.  A true test of compatibility, which I'm happy to say we passed with flying colors.  We had to move back onto land when family issues and graduate school intervened, but promised each other many times that one day we would again live aboard and cruise a sailboat.  More than two decades later, the time has come. The last four months have been *consumed* by the search for a boat, and this is the one.  She has a very interesting story of her own, and now she'll become part of our story.  We have named her "Promise."

I'm looking forward to having time for something besides boat-hunting.  I can finally get back to work!

Central Coast

4" X 6" gouache.

Both these and the previous post were done around Lompoc, which is a really nice area for landscape. These are more little experiments in gouache.  It's a medium that often appeals to oil painters, because it can be used in much the same way and is very forgiving especially when painted over gessoed paper (like below).  But used as a thin wash on paper, it behaves pretty  much the same as transparent water color although with less granulation.

4" X 6" gouache on gessoed paper. 

Rural sketch

4 X 6" gouache & watercolor.  A scene from the central coast of California, near Lompoc.

Zombie Self

 7" X 5", gouache on canvas panel

Upcoming

Fellow AIR Lisa Jetonne (check out her amazing residency blog) has designed a promo card and poster for the upcoming Cabrillo Centennial show.  If you're in the area, please check it out:

You can also see 2013 AIR Bill Griswold's book of stunning photos here (click "preview" to see the whole book).

Sun Pillar and "Brushstroke"

Took this in January from our balcony with my phone camera, and still just love this photo.

Life Class

Couple, 40-minute pose.  10" X 10", oil/gessoed BFK

There's a recently-organized life class available at the SD Art Institute (where I often show), and I finally had a chance to check it out.  Here's what I did there, in reverse order--the painted sketch above was the final (and, at 40 minutes, the longest) pose of the night. Prior to that, a 20-minute pose:

Couple 2, 9" X 9", oil/BFK

I've missed working from the figure, so even these short poses were fun to do.

Here are the earlier, shorter poses, done in pencil:

 

^Ten minutes

 

^Five minutes

^Two minutes...

and to be honest, I like some of those two and five-minute drawings best of all. 

I'll be traveling a lot for the rest of the month, two trips to Washington DC and lots of museum and gallery-crawling!  Hopefully I'll have some new work to post in November if not sooner.

"Selfie"

10" X 8", oil on panel.

There's nothing quite so humbling as staring at yourself for an extended period of time and trying to be honest about what you see.  It was time for me to do a new one, to document some changes in the past few months (hair length, glasses, weight loss).  I should try to emulate my friend Bill Sharp, who has done an annual selfie on his birthday, for many years.

Other news:  the painting a couple posts ago, Solar Charm, was awarded Juror's Choice in the September SDAI show.

Art in the Park

I've got six paintings exhibited through Sept 8, at the Cabrillo National Monument Visitors Center.  This is the annual Art in the Park event, and the Center is filled with oil paintings from Southern California artists.  These are my six, done during my artist residency at Cabrillo:

Untouched--Intertidal Zone is 20X24", Dudleya Live-Forever and Searchlight Shelter are both 10 X 8", and Stairs on Tidepool Path, Pelican Scanning, and End of Point Haze are all 6 X 8".

To pick up the thread of the last post, a few more thoughts about memory.  We can train ourselves to allow memory a role in our work.  Henri talks about memory training, and so do modern teachers like Kevin Macpherson and Terry Miura.  Henri envisioned a studio where the model would pose in one room, and the students would look and ponder, then go to another room to paint or draw.  Macpherson recommends a similar exercise with landscape--spending 20-30 minutes just meditating on a scene, then going home and painting it from memory.

But why do we need memory when we paint from life?  Well, because sometimes conditions change, or are different to begin with, from what would best express our inner experience of a subject.  And, in the case of plein air painting, there are always some edits and always gaps to fill.  If you can envision it, you can fill that gap and have it speak as clearly as the rest of the elements.  But if you don't have this skill, whatever you improvise will look contrived and not convincing.  It won't fit.

Memory is a skill you need to have in order to speak your personal truth about the subject.  And that's what you're going for--not the truth, YOUR truth.