-
Golden West College Group Show
Click on thumbnail for details-
Recent Posts
Experiments in Paint
Painting is one of the most challenging endeavors. With every subject, and every painting there are new challenges and lessons learned. I think of each painting as a new experiment. This journal documents the journey.Archives
Category Archives: impressionism
Warm Laguna
Painting in the late afternoon light is challenging because the scene in front of you changes so quickly. It also can be rewarding. Sometimes as I scan thumbnails of my paintings, I feel a “sameness” of color palate, a lot of yellows, blues and greens. Painting in the waning afternoon light, changes all that.
Warm Laguna, Oil on Linen 12 x 16
On a Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I set out to the North Laguna Beach trailhead with a commanding view of Laguna Main Beach, set up, and began to paint; knowing that like it or not, the light would be completely gone in 90 minutes. The warm setting sun, caused the sky to be a pale green, the distant hills to become lavender, and the foreground trees to light up in oranges and reds. This painting is “looser” than others I have painted recently, but I guess that is the trade off, when you are racing the sun.
Also posted in Laguna Beach, plein air, Seascape
1 Comment
Autumn in California
This week it was clear that the painting that I wanted to do involved sycamores. The America’s East Coast has the beautiful fall foliage of the maple trees. Here in California, we get the more subtle golden orange colors of the majestic sycamores. In the last few weeks, sycamores have started to turn.
As you may have noticed, these paintings are in a 1:2 format (they measure 6 x 12 inches). I have been invited to participate in a small paintings show at the Debra Huse Gallery on Balboa Island, (all the paintings must have these dimensions). It will be very interesting to see how other artists tackle both this small size and the interesting shape.
The light colored sycamore trunks have beautiful cool colors. If I accentuate the blues of the trunks, I can more easily reveal the orange of the autumn leaves.
Boston Whaler
Sometimes fatigue or desperation work in your favor. Last Tuesday, during the invitational, the marine layer had kept the coast largely in fog. By the afternoon, it appeared as if the sun might be able to break through the haze, so I headed to the public dock areas on the Newport Peninsula. There I saw a Boston Whaler. I liked the bright orange color of the seats that were exposed to the sun. Beside it, floated a grey zodiac with a yellow tarp. The paint on this picture is more loosely applied. I like the effect and plan, in the future, to be a little more liberal with my paint application.
Boston Whaler 12 x 16, oil on linen
The Oaks Beyond
By the time I set up to paint, the sun was high overhead, and the shadows had hidden beneath the trees. This view is from near the entrance of the Caspers Wilderness Park looking east. This is a great park. There is hiking, camping, and plenty of wildlife. Despite this, it is not always easy to find a place to paint.
I found myself trying to become more creative about interpreting the color. Instead of a yellow imprimatura , I decided to use a reddish ground. Despite this, I still found myself trying to faithfully capture the colors of the scene before me. A good friend of mine calls the the “tyranny of the real”.
The Oaks Beyond 11 x 14 , Oil on Linen
Besides issues of color, there were other issues to resolve in this painting. The actual scene had a road and some telephone poles. I initially included them in the scene, but found them both too distracting, so I painted them out. The foreground was largely shapeless, so I rearranged some of the shrubbery and created a visual pass to some interesting passages beyond the near oak tree.
William Wendt
William Wendt, (February 20, 1865 – December 29, 1946), immigrated to the United States from Germany when he was 15 years of age. Originally working in Chicago, he painted formula pictures while he developed as a painter. In 1894 and again two years later he traveled to California. He must have liked what he saw, because after marrying in 1906, he and his wife decided to move to California. Here his paintings changed. Maybe coming to California changed him. Here, the landscape became holy.
He was a founding member of the California Art Club in 1909, and was elected its president in 1911.
He loved nature and perhaps more than any other California impressionist elevated the California landscape to an almost god-like state. In a letter to a fellow artist, he wrote, “One feels that he is on holy ground, in Nature’s Temple.”
From top to bottom:
Creeping Shadows, 1928, oil on canvas, 30 x 36.
Trees, They Are My Friends, 1931, oil on canvas, 24 x 32 inches
Coast of 1,000 Caves, (dated 1941, painted c. 1915) oil on canvas , 40 x 50 inches
References:
California Light: A Century of Landscapes. Jean Stern & Molly Siple. 2011
Santiago Canyon
The Rains had Passed, Santiago Canyon 12 x 16
There was a lot of things going on in this beautiful valley, so before I started, I made a little 4 cm thumbnail sketch so that I could organize the shapes in my mind.
Also posted in Landscape, painting progression, plein air, Sketch
Tagged GeoTag, painting process
1 Comment
Changing Times – Santa Ana River
Last week I painted this same bridge spanning the Santa Ana River, and there were a few other compositions I wanted to try. I got to the river a little bit earlier this time. The day was sunny with beautiful clouds, so I decided that I would feature the clouds, and their reflections in the water.
The clouds reminded me of a painted made by William Wendt of the Santa Ana River. Back then, the river wasn’t channelized (lined in concrete to control flooding). A couple of severe floods changed all that. The 1938 flood submerged Anaheim and Orange in up to 4 feet of water, destroyed many of the citrus groves, and killed more than 50 people. This prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to dam and concrete the river beginning in the 1940′s.
Train Span, Santa Ana River. 12 x 16 inches
Below is an image of the painting that William Wendt painted in 1928. I believe that he painted it about 5 miles upstream from where I was standing. His river was wild. my river is tamed. In fact, even though millions of people live near this waterway, when I mention the river, many have never heard of it, or barely perceive having to cross a bridge on a freeway on their way to work.
William Wendt.
Santa Ana River, 1928.
Oil on linen 25 x 30, private collection.
(click on image to see larger size)
References:
Wikipedia: Santa Ana River
In Nature’s Temple: The Life and Art of William Wendt. 2008, The Irvine Museum
Also posted in Landscape, plein air, Uncategorized
1 Comment
Batiquitos Lagoon
Along the North San Diego County coast there are a series of wetlands. Batiquitos Lagoon is a coastal wetland in Carlsbad. I went with Jim Wodark, and we got there at around 9:30 am, while it was still overcast. The light was silvery and prepared myself to possibly paint some of the vibrant blues and greens that can be seen on overcast days. As we were setting up, however, a little blue sky opened up.
Eucalyptus trees are not native to California, they were introduced by Australians during the gold rush, but the trees are featured prominently in the paintings of the California Impressionists, so they are now closely associated with the state . This grove of trees was interesting, but the shapes were a bit confusing, so before starting, I made a thumbnail sketch to organize the tree shapes. Here is a picture of my thumbnail sketch (about 1 x 1.5 inches), and of the trees.
Latitude: 33.09221569194314
Longitude: -117.29162693023682
More information about the Batiquitos Lagoon can be found at the Batiquitos Lagoon Foundation website
Also posted in composition, Landscape, painting progression, plein air, Seascape, Sketch
Tagged composition, GeoTag, painting process
2 Comments
Santa Ana River
Yesterday I had a mid-morning meeting, so I couldn’t get a painting start until late morning. As the summer rapidly approaches, and the sun is overhead, the shadows disappear, and the sun bleaches out the color.
I live in Orange County California, which, although a nice place to live, is sometimes a challenging place to paint. The last 50 years have led to a building boom, so that it is now the second most populous county in California (over 3 million people). Much of the landscape that the California impressionists painted, has now been covered over with shopping centers, subdivisions, freeways and parking lots.
Here, we not only pave our roads, we pave our rivers (channelized). Such is the case of the Santa Ana River, the largest river in Southern California.
Santa Ana River Bridge 12 x 16
The rich colors of the shadow on the shallow water were so interesting, that I forgot to take a few early pictures of my painting, as I rushed to get a few guiding sketch lines and start blocking in large areas of color. In the two hour time period the shadows were changing- like a giant sundial, so I concentrated on the large masses of color on the water and the pilings first.
Recently I have been using lead based white paint (cremnitz white). I like the feel of the paint on canvas and I feel as if I have more control. The titanium that I had been using, especially in a high-key painting with a lot of white tends to get too slick/oily. Yesterday, I elected to use the titanium and I think you can see the looseness in the brushstrokes, which I didn’t mind since it was 98 degrees (36.7 C) and the heat from the ground made the landscape shimmer.
Also posted in Landscape, painting progression, plein air
Tagged GeoTag, painting process
3 Comments
Sycamore Grove
I met up with my friend Jim Wodark, and we explored the dry creekbed for subject matter, before settling on a view of a path through a picturesque sycamore grove. Beyond the grove of trees, is the Santiago Creek which just a few weeks ago had quite a bit of water, but now is dry.
At one of the late stages of the painting, (you can see the difference between slide 6 & 7) I adjusted the blue in the middle distance. By changing the river bank into a cluster of trees I kept the eye interested in the focal paint, the clearing beyond the trees.
Here is a picture of the scene. Latitude: 33.79937912919146 & Longitude: -117.75471568107605
Also posted in friends, Landscape, painting progression, plein air
Tagged GeoTag, painting process
4 Comments
Golden West College Group Show
Click on thumbnail for details
