03_06_11 Colorado Bridge, Pasadena.

I believe it is also known as a suicide bridge. However, it was really nice on Sunday.

Some February landscape paintings.

Today, 02/13/11 at the Venice Boardwalk. I went watercolor and gouache on this one.

02/06/11 Last week at Placerita Canyon.

01_30_11 Old LA Zoo.

Old LA Zoo. It was nice and overcast on Sunday.

01_16_11 Topanga Mountains

I went back digitally to solve some of the value problems with the painting. I worked the values to a better hierarchy and tightened up that middleground hill and totally repainted the land touching the water. Usually, my strokes are fairly confident, but you can see below that the edges look uncertain and a little rushed, especially in the tree. The painting had started pretty well, but parts were still unresolved by the time I chose to quit. Unfortunately, I ran out of time as the sun became drastically different. One thing that a friend pointed out was that the ocean, while graphic, had waves moving diagonally and I wish I'd indicated it in my original painting. I added some movement digitally which helps keep that area a little more interest.
Latest from my Sunday Painting Posse Exploits, a little location in the Topanga Mountains somewhere in Santa Monica. This went fairly well for such dynamic lighting, so many greens (I'm more used to less lush colors and more earthy tones). As you can see from the bw image, my value grouping was a incomplete, although in the color image I pretty much nailed the light wrapping around the path and illuminating that grass. It really was that delicious looking.

Vasquez Rocks 01_09_11

Vasquez Rocks. I was gonna find an epic vista, but a late start made me choose otherwise. I found this on the way to the epicness.

El Matador 12_12_10

Welcome back and Happy 2011! However, this painting was my last painting from 2010. Another wonderful trip to El Matador. No matter where you look or what weather we're having, every view is good.

Sunday Painting Posse: Mt. Baldy 12_05_10

This is before it started raining.

Mt. Baldy. So cold, so rainy, but I have all my fingers and toes. I'm sorry this isn't finished, but the weather got out of hand and I couldn't keep the paint mixable. Coupled with the wind flipping my easel and dumping my turps, I called it quits. This is where I finished.

Maguire Gardens 11_21_10

Painting from Maguire Gardens near the LA overpass. A little gouache and watercolor sketch. I did tweak it a tiny bit in photoshop, but only a little.

Stunt Rd painting 11_14_10

It's pretty hard to get a good color correction for oil paintings sometimes. The background was washy, but appears a little faded instead below. I was using multiple levels of curves and color balance adjustment layers, but I was doing so much digital work I ended up doing a little paintover (above).

A little painting off of Stunt Rd, Santa Monica last Sunday. The last of my 6" x 8"s.

Sunday Painting Posse paintings.

10/10/10 Santa Monica Catholic Church

10/03/10 Chinatown - Chunking Plaza

Sorry for the delay. Here's the latest Sunday Painting Posse paintings.

El Matador photos - art at high tide.

It totally looks like I'm painting waves here.
Ordinarily, I face my subject, but the sun would've been all over me, so I angled my canvas away from it. I see from this photo though that my palette was still in sunlight though. Rats.

You can see the size of my painting. I'd love to work bigger, but it's not convenient to carry. Also, below you can see that I haven't figured out a way to get a bigger palette, so I can't mix any more more paint than what you see.
While the tide is nice and cool on my feet, it starts to carry away my water bucket and my easel starts to sink. Notice that my legs are getting further and further apart so I can stay level with my canvas.
Hi guys, I didn't mention in my previous entry, but when we were at El Matador, there were at least two other groups of landscape painters there. A couple of artists were nice enough to take some photos of me trying to work as the tide was getting closer and closer. Thanks Maya!

09_19_10 at El Matador

Here's a photo of the real thing, taken by another artist enjoying the location. Thanks Maya!

El Matador, I have returned.

And I brought my oils.

This was my first outing with the landscape painting group, "The Sunday Painting Posse."

Tahoe Paintings_Sept 01 to Sept 12, 2010

With a little time left in the day, I drove into the Nevada side of Tahoe to Spooner Lake. Freezing weather, but awesome scenery. Still victim to fast moving clouds and changing sunlight though.

Refreshed by a good night's rest, I painted this at Bijou Park. Awesome clouds that day, but they were moving so fast that it was difficult to paint a consistent lighting condition.

Part 2 of best worst day ever. Frustrated by my earlier difficulties, I decided to do one more before I hiked up from Emerald Bay. Of course one huge blast of wind hit right before I finished, spraying the panel with sand. You can see the one stroke's worth of blank canvas at the bottom. I took that as a sign, picked up my stuff, packed up my painting, and left.

Part of my best worst day ever. I hiked to the bottom of Emerald Bay and broke out one of my best paintings ever. Unfortunately, there are tremendous lake effects in Tahoe, and just as I was finishing, a huge gust of wind blew up and managed to slide the painting sideways out of my easel in face first into the sand. I scraped most of the sand off and repainted some, but it still came out a little dirty.

A quick painting at my cousin's house in Tahoe. I don't often do afternoon paintings, but I didn't arrive 'til late. The sunlight seems to change much quicker as it's setting.

Morgan Hill

Oil painting off Olive Ave in Morgan Hill.

Landscape Painting_Descanso Gardens 03

Nothin' but palette knife. One of my best paintings I think. The culmination of hard work, sweat, tears, odorless mineral spirits, and divine intervention. I've definitely found working with the palette knife forces you to always mix with a lot of paint, so I didn't run out of my colors too early and I was able to mix minute variations into them and with a combination of scraping down the canvas and piling it on thickly was able to get a real range of thickness. Not a bad composition, but I wish I'd fit the tops of the palms in there. Next time.

Landscape Painting_Griffith Park Observatory

Griffith Park Observatory. Our last class tackling deep deep atmospheric perspective and city complications. Ironically, I don't know if any of us actually painted the Observatory.

Landscape Painting_Descanso Gardens 02

Near the California Desert garden.

A return to Descanso Gardens, this time with color. A kid said my colors were so colorful and that my trees were nice and squishy.

Landscape Painting_Malibu Creek Park

Not bad, but I got lazy with the foreground. I like the top 2/3 best.

I worked on a gessoed panel here. Without the tooth of a canvas on board, the paint slides around a lot and streakyness becomes a challenge. One more challenge than I would have cared for.

One of my best paintings for this whole summer. I was able to keep some of the original mark making and a little of the washes but get a some thickness and hit my edges. Sweet!

Landscape Painting_Caltech

Caltech. Really nice environment and a lot of little pockets of varying landscapes to paint.

Landscape Painting_Chinatown

Having dealt with multiple changing scenery the previous day, I chose a balcony up high that was unlikely to change drastically. I did it a little later in the afternoon than I would have cared for, so I had to work a little quicker than usual, but it still came out alright. The architecture and supercolors are a lot of fun to paint.
Chinatown! Our first foray into architecture. I spent an hour in the shade before my protective shadow of "cool" receded and I cooked for the rest of the day. However, the heat wasn't as bad as all of the cars passing through, parking, the stores opening and setting up shop, etc.