Red Rose and pastel landscape progress

Red rose in Derwent Graphitint on paper

Yesterday, my beautiful granddaughter Sascha came home from a walk with a lovely large red rose that was blown off a neighbor's bush with about half an inch of stem. It's still sitting in its saucer on my desk. I had to sketch it, so decided to use strong, soft Derwent Graphitint watersoluble graphite pencils. Dry, they're like 8B graphite pencils with a hint of color. Washed, that hint of color becomes a lot stronger but still has a subtle graphite sheen.

When I use pencil I love the softest graphite pencils, so these have been favorites for a long time. I'm not the sort of artist who shades by five or six or more delicate layers with a hard pencil. Scribble and smudge, give me sweeping motions and strong contrast right from the start! So these are a lot of fun and I've got quite a few of them - by accident at the moment I've got maybe 3 sets of 12 but can't find one of the sets of 24 that I acquired, so I need to replace that. But having an extra won't hurt! 

How I wound up with small sets was their inclusion in trades and gift sets. One of the small sets is in an awesome zipper case with watercolor palette, hardcover sketchbook, other sketch and wash pencils and a waterbrush all in an easily carried case. Can't find its native waterbrush but have so many Niji ones it'll be easy to replace.

Iris Hill and Oak pastel plein air

This is something I started day before yesterday, when the rain stopped and I hung outside with my farrier daughter while she fixed her truck. It was sunny and beautiful, the foreground in shade with this sunlit patch beyond the trees blazing behind the iris hill. The iris patch extends far to the right too and into the distance. I might be able to finish just from what I have done already... or I might go outside again to finish, which would be truer to the scene.

I used a complementary water underpainting, scribbled masses in pastels and then washed with a waterbrush. Paper is a tan Canson Mi-Tientes Touch piece, drawing board a battered aluminum clipboard with a box underneath that exactly holds my 60 Rembrandt half stick pastels. Might hold 60 Great American half sticks even though that box is slightly larger too, have to try that. Obviously not at the same time, but pretty handy for going outside!

In fifteen minutes I have Johannes Vloothuis class online so going out won't be till later. I'll see how I feel, if he gets me all wound up to paint I might amble out, but if the chronic fatigue or arthritis bites I might not. Pretty tempting though, it's sunny and lovely out there again!

Jonquil and Plein Air Trees

 Jonquil 

8" x 10" pastel on brown sketch paper

Last Wednesday was my clinic visit and the elevator in my building still hasn't been fixed. So I called in to Paratransit and set my pickup time an hour late to have time for sketching. The stairs wiped me out, but the shot invigorated me and the weather was good. So I went out into the garden. The previous visit a whole bed of jonquils blazed bright lemon yellow in the back plus a few scattered around in other beds. This time there were three plants left. 

Two were in extremely awkward places that I had to step off the path and weave between beds of flowers just to get photos. That was difficult and strenuous. I lost a couple of pocket contents just getting photos of those and the micro lilacs from the strangest lilac bush I've ever seen - litle spikes maybe 3" long and tiny 1/8" florets in deep blue-violet. Wonderful scent though and I got a series of photos of those. I wore myself out on plant photography and then discovered even the easiest jonquil to reach still meant sitting on hte grass looking down at it, or lay down and get a photo at its level. I got down for the photo.

Then went out back by the patient drop-off and pickup spot, got some good azalea photos and sketched my jonquil from the best photo. I was not happy with the sketch, thought it was awful, covered the pad and put it away. Read a little just resting. Then got the sketch urge again and decided to do the big palm tree beyond the parking lot that I've never gotten a good photo of close enough for detail, plus the deciduous tree that overlapped it. The bases were actually blocked by some shorter bushes and plantings, but once I'd sketched them they floated. I picked up some green and added a harmonic line a little like those in Chinese paintings to make the sketches look better.

Trees study from life

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Markers on Bockingford paper

Why I don't like this sketch is that the extra color I picked up blurred and created unwanted blossoms and bare patches at random in the foliage of both. It's not totally a success. But not totally a failure either. It is what it is - a tree study from life. I remember the trees better for sketching this. Where it's not literal I did get the basic shapes and identities and the feel of them.

I could probably have reworked and layered this, but that would change it a lot and it might come out overworked if I did. So I treated it as a study and after I finished the jonquil this afternoon, decided to post both. It can stand as what it is. Not every sketch has to be an inspired, perfect painting!

As for the pastel jonquil, I finished without looking back at the photo. I had enough sketch to go by and just strengthened it. Not my best but lots better than it looked unfinished. Again, a study, a sketch, not a fine painting on sanded paper. This is what that brown Bee Recycled Rough Sketch paper is for!

I started it with Cretacolor Pastels Carre' (hard pastels 36 colors) and finished with 60 Rembrandt half sticks, soft pastels at the "medium" range of softness. Good enough to go on the sketch wall!

Forget perfectionism, just have fun!

Life Sketches, Pen and Watercolor

Ari, Azalea and Trees

Pigma Micron pen and watercolor

Stillman & Birn Zeta journal 

7" square

Today was my biweekly outing to the SFGH Family Health Center Memory Garden. Of course because I forgot to bring my good camera, the Kindle, there were loads of roses in bloom unlike last time when there was only one rather bedraggled rose. Lots of flower photos taken with my phone though. I still had time to sketch, ink and paint the first azalea blossom on some small bushes out back at the patient drop-off and several trees out there that fascinated me. I ran them all together and left out cars, intervening buildings and background stuff because I felt like it. Not into sketching cars and buildings as much as nature.

Plein Air Iris Pond

Iris Pond - Plein Air in Golden Gate Park. 9 1/2" x 12" / 24cm x 30cm Pan Pastels on Buttercup color ClaireFontaine PastelMat coated pastel card. The link is to my Etsy listing. Plein air in Golden Gate Park has been my goal from the day I first decided to move back to San Francisco. Heck, it's been a dream of mine since I first read about San Francisco and wanted to move there back as a kid. Yesterday, I actually made the trip.

A local artist friend Reba whom I met on WetCanvas met me in front of the De Young Museum. We didn't have far to go to find a wonderful spot to paint. A small memorial garden right next to the museum had paths running everywhere and a gorgeous natural planting in the central island in a round pond. Mallards swam in the water along with a turtle.

 I did three pages of sketches, took 300+ reference photos and painted the best plein air scene I have ever done in my life. The composition almost planned itself.

Both of us noticed the balance of the area around that big rock. Reba's painting focused more on the water lilies and she has a larger area of water and rocks under water in hers. I focused on the stone and the irises planted next to it, though I moved most of them to the left of the rock replacing a clump of different plants.

Unlike all my previous attempts at plein air, I took command of my painting. I moved elements freely to strengthen the composition. I left out plants that I thought were beautiful and could have painted in detail. I have reference photos of them for later paintings anyway, I wasn't there to imitate a camera. I was there to paint from life and that's what came of it - a bold, big, loose, colorful painting that almost painted itself. I spent three hours entirely with the Pans on it.

I had meant to use stick accents for small details but the corners of my Sofft sponge gave a better look to the irises. Otherwise I might have tried to detail them as if I waded right up to them to do a flower macro. I could do that on another trip. Some of the same irises were planted in long grass near the garden, so I could roll up close to them and paint just the flowers the way I used to. But that's not why I went plein air.

I can find flowers in people's gardens, window boxes, supermarket stands easily enough. It's the outdoor landscapes shaped and maintained by the incredible gardeners at Golden Gate Park that I went there to paint. I could go back every day for years and not run out of new things to paint. I could spend a lifetime just in that park.

There's a buffalo enclosure so if I want to do something with a cool Western theme, I'll roll out there sometime for life studies of bison. I remember the Japanese Tea Garden had that intensity - thousands of wonderful views each worthy of a painting every time I moved or turned my head.

In some ways Golden Gate Park is like copying masters. Other creative minds and souls went into crafting the beauty I visited to paint. The whole park is a massive collaborative work among architects, gardeners and donors.

I have yet to visit the botanical gardens or the pond or streams but the paths run everywhere. I've got a map of it now and both of us definitely plan to do this again. We might get into a habit of painting out there regularly as well as visiting the great museums in and around the park.

 I've finally achieved a lifetime goal. This was one from the "bucket list" of things to do before I die - paint plein air in Golden Gate Park. It was so fantastic that I can't resist doing it again and again for the rest of my life. Meeting a good online friend and hitting it off so well that we're now happily offline friends is wonderful too.

Some of our trips, we'll leave the city to visit some of her coastal plein air spots around Pacifica. We tested whether the two of us could manage to heave my power chair into her small convertible's back seat and it worked! So in future you'll see some plein air seascapes too, from every vantage point that can be reached by a paved path. This is only the start.

Today I'm glowing with joy at the sight of it and feel much better than I usually do after a massive exertion. I got a little sunburned, just enough that I got enough sun to feel great.

I've got home care coming, so today's daily painting will likely be done in the evening by artificial light. I have all those photos to sort through and choose a good subject for today's painting though, so watch for a new post. I feel good and definitely ready to paint again! My home care worker just arrived so watch for a new post - today's post - in a few hours.

Yesterday I was a bit too tired to post after I got back but it was completely worth it! Big thanks to Reba for making the day such a joy!

Painting from Life

Small tree and bush study in Daniel Smith watercolors on my Robert Bateman spiral bound multimedia sketch pad. Not all paintings have to be framable or serious, like many plein air paintings this one's more a study for later paintings. I took some reference photos of the same cluster of trees and bushes next to the brick clinic building.

When I'm out at my clinic appointments or otherwise going somewhere that isn't planned as a plein air trip, I fall back on using a Niji water brush. That limits me to effects I can do with a size 7 or 8 nylon round brush but the convenience of not needing to hunt down water or find a place I can wash the brush afterward is well worth it.

Since I visit the same clinic every Wednesday morning, the more often I sketch these trees the more I'll see in them. I can experiment with different colors and effects. In this one I deliberately muted the greens, didn't try to capture the colors exactly as I saw them in the sun.