Cornucopia

It has been too long since I have posted anything, and I'm not even going to get into making excuses for the lapse in my creative journey...life happens.
Since this week is Thanksgiving, I decided to do a cornucopia. This was originally planned as a project for some students, so the first picture here is a rough ball point pen sketch from memory during a staff meeting.

The second one is my demonstration piece that I did in front of 50 or so third through sixth graders. They were not a real focused bunch as this was an afterschool activity and they were more than ready for their Thanksgiving break. So the piece is kind of rushed and done in several different intervals as I walked around the room. The paper is 9x12" black construction paper with a mix of chalk and oil pastels. Once it was finished, it was sprayed with hair spray to prevent further smudging (but also caused curling due to the low quality paper).

Some of the students' pieces turned out really well, and I'm disappointed I didn't get a chance to take pictures of them. Overall I think the students enjoyed the project.

Model pencil sketch

This pencil sketch is from a picture of a model that I had seen on Instagram, @tiannag. I actually picked this photo because it incorporates a lot of the areas that I struggle with: hair, hands, eyelashes. I think it was a good challenge. I started by tracing the main features to make sure I got proportions right. Some people might consider that "cheating", but for the purposes of practise, I don't think it matters. I really enjoyed drawing the hair. I think it turned out with really good texture.

Rabbit in pencil

I figured I would play around with sketching a rabbit since its right around Easter. My inspiration for this actually came from "Leap", the 56-foot long bunny that is in the Sacramento Metro Airport (SMF). Conceived by artist Laurence Argent, it was installed back in October 2011 when they opened up the new terminal. According to some articles, they have dubbed SMF as the "Hare-port", but I have never heard it called that here in Sacramento!

Unlike the scupture, which is bright red and created from geometric triangles, I decided to make my sketch more realistic by drawing fur onto my bunny and just using the reference photo for the form.

I hope every-bunny had a hoppy Easter!

Saturday sketching at the cafe

On a sunny Saturday, I headed down to a downtown cafe to do some sketching on the patio. I always feel a little awkward as I "spy" on other people while sketching, so it is always a very quick sketch, and usually from the other side of the cafe. I kind of cheated with the jogger by taking a picture as he jogged by, then working from that. The chair of course was a subject that didn't move around and didn't mind me staring at it. And as you can see, the patio chairs are not very comfortable, so this whole session was about a half hour before my bottom was numb. But when you want to practice human form and you don't have a model, you do what you gotta do!

Succulant pencil drawing

This is a sketch of a succulent plant that I started a while back, plein air, outside on the patio. As I was going through my sketch book, I thought I should finish it up, so with a little shading, I think it's done.

Atmospheric effects, watercolor

I am always watching the clouds, and with this wet spring we are having, they are always there in some form or another. I thought I would try to recreate a rainstorm, with different kinds of clouds, cirrus (the high whispy ones), and cumulonimbus (big towering ones). I worked with very wet paper, letting the paint move around freely, hoping for some happy accidents.

The cumulonimbus clouds were actually  "blooms" or "cauliflower" caused by not being patient and trying to add more paint to an area that is still not dry.  By adding wet paint (or water) into an area that isn't as wet as what you are adding, it creates a bloom. Some people love the affect while some don't. I used it as a happy accident.

This second piece is more of the same, but I tried to encourage the paint to move the way I wanted it to in order to get the desired effect of a rain cloud passing through.
I used similar color pallettes in both with Payne's grey being my cloud color of choice. Which one is your favorite?

No Hands Bridge, watercolor

The Mountain Quarries Bridge, now more frequently called the "No Hands" Bridge was built in 1912 and is located just south of Auburn, CA. It crosses over the North Fork of the American River and is near the trailhead of several nice hikes in the area, including the trail to Black Hole of Calcutta Falls (which I have sketched as well as watercolored).
This concrete bridge has always caught my attention between the shape of the bridge and the shadows it casts. The reference photo was one I took last fall.
I enjoy seeing the balance created between the straight lines of structures, the bridge in this case, and the free form of nature.

Sunset watercolors

Finally got out the watercolors again after way too long of a break. My Artist Way friends were wanting some directions with watercolor and I thought some sunsets would be a good jumping off exercise. Loosely based on my Sunset along the River painting,  it was not anything planned out, just some spontaneous painting.  We experimented with blending colors wet on wet, lifting color to create clouds, as well as creating silohettes: mountains, trees, birds.

This one was based on a photo from a thank you card. It was suppose to be a lighthouse, and even though it didn't turn out quite as I had wanted, I liked the colors I was able to create in the sky. The Artist Way is about removing the creative 'blocks' we impose upon ourselves and to just let the creative spirit flow through us. Sometimes just playing around without the pressure of creating some masterpiece is just what we need to inspire us.

Mural project

I have finally completed the mural for our elementary school. I know that murals seem to be the "in" thing in oue area these days, especially since the Sacramento Mural Festival that we had here in August 2016. This is the mural project I have been working on for a while. It started out as a sketch based on some ideas the principal showed me (see above). Then we coordinated colors based on the school colors and stretched it to fit the space. Then the execution of painting it into the ball wall was done over two days, thanks to several teachers volunteering their time on a Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.
The ball wall is 12 feet tall and 30 feet wide...enormous! This has definitely been out of my comfort zone, at least 10 times bigger than anything I have ever done (except for painting a bedroom). I hope the community enjoys it!

Sunset along the River

I painted this in my studio today from a photo I had taken last November, and the subject matter, colors of the sunset and even the time of year reminded me of another painting I had done back in 2013, Sunset at William B Pond. Now, I had done that one plein aire (I don't do much of that this time of year), but I think it does a good job of showing my progress over the past couple of years with my watercolors. This new piece was done on a 1/2 sheet of 11x14 (making it 7x11, rather an awkward size for framing but great for quick practice painting).

Sunset on William B Pond, 9x12, October 2013

Bark of the Ponderosa Pine, watercolor

This painting was supposed to be part of my "zoom in" themed pieces, (along with River Rocks and Eye) but it will not be included in the Rancho Cordova City Hall display because it took me too long to get this finished. In fact, I'm still not sure it's finished.
The idea originally came from some reference photos of a ponderosa pine tree, with its bark that looks kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. I started by tracing a few shapes with pencil, but then let my imagination run wild with the rest of it. The bark seemed so simple at first but then it just took on this whole other feel, very abstract. I am not one to do abstract painting so my brain keeps telling me it needs something else, so I kept coming back and adding more layers. I have finally said I need to step away from it and call it done.

Ghandi, pencil sketch

A couple of years ago, I spent this January holiday drawing a pencil sketch portrait of Martin Luther King. Today I decided to continue the tradition, but this time I chose Mahatma Ghandi, another great civil rights leader. In fact, Martin Luther King used many of Ghandi's priciples, saying that they were the "guiding light" of his technique of nonviolent social change.

The image actually came from a poster that I had seen at a school I had trainings at this summer, and I took a pic with my phone thinking I might use it for inspiration sometime...so here it is 6 months later.

If we are to reach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
-- Mahatma Gandhi, 

Eye watercolor

"The eye is the window to the soul," people say. Well, the eye has always facinated me: The way it looks, the structure of it, as well as its function. It takes in light as well as reflects light. Without them, art becomes pointless, in my eyes. (Pun intended)
I loved being able to play around with the iris color. It seems no one has just one eye color but a bunch all fused together. So I incorporated blues, greens, and yellows. I am blue-eyed myself so that is what I dominated with (not that I have anything against Brown eyes, I love them too!)
I find the most challenging part of painting eyes is getting the two eyes to match, so painting just one here avoided the hard part.
This project is very similar to the last time I painted a 4x4 square with one eye a couple of years ago, except this one is much bigger (11x14).

River rocks, watercolor

This piece was inspired by an upcoming show at Rancho Cordova City Hall art called "Zoom, a closer look". The painting is from a photo I took along the American River of all the different kinds of river rocks. The colors had tints of red, green, orange, blue, (and striped!) so I was excited get experimental with painting them. Once I got the basic shapes of the rocks down with pencil, I added a wash into a few of the rocks and poured salt into them to create texture (an idea that came from Rukiye Garip's video "Creek with Stones"). Then it was just a matter of playing with colors and shadows to make them look rounded. I really like the way this composition turned out, very well balanced for just a pile of rocks! Can you tell which ones were "salted"?

Emerald Bay, watercolor

So, my New Year's resolution it to finish some paintings that have been sitting in my studios for too long, for various reasons. It's usually because I don't know what to do next, or I know what I need to do but am afaid of messing up. Fear needs to be removed from the equation. What's the worst that can happen? I mess up the painting and get to start over with new found knowledge! That is my resolution.

 This painting is from a photo I took this fall of Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe. I overworked the sky and water...just over aggressive with my blue paint. It also could be the Fabriano 140# hot press paper I'm using. It doesn't lend itself to any "scrubbing" and seems to get overworked easily.  I wasn't sure how to fix it so I let it sit.  Since its all just part of the learning process, I have finished the rest of the painting, and posted it anyway, even with its imperfections.