m. p i l g r i m (art)

 I LOVE San Fran.  It’s damp and chilly even in the summer, which is a nice break from the desert.   I was looking through my photos for a possible next reference, and came across this fairly uninspiring one:  There’s lots to like about his composition. The horizon isn’t across the center.  It has a nice diagonal line. This one went by pretty quickly, actually.  The first lay-in looked like this:  Fairly close to the reference, but a reference is just a reference. It’s up to the artist to put her own spin on things.  So, I added more detail to the distant hills.  California hills are pretty smoothly contoured, and of course there’s that golden grass.  I also added detail to the sea and the bridge. I worked on the sea a bit more and added some more distant details, like distance waves against the south side of the bridge.    The ipad darkened this photo much more than it is. The colors are closer to the photo above this one. I’l...

 My husband is a gardener. He’s amazing. And, I keep thinking I should (there’s those “should” words) paint some of it, but there’s so much going on that it’s hard.  However, this weekend, I decided to give it a shot. I pulled a 16x20 canvas out of my closet, and pulled up a picture on my iPad. There’s one on a cloudy day, and one with the sun out. I like to have both on hand, because the bright, but cloudy day photos give you more of an idea of the local color, while the sunny ones tell you where to put the shadows.    I started with wetting my canvas with water. This is a thing I’m doing now, and so far it’s working okay, I think. The beginning lay-in is kind of water colors, since I’ve made the switch to water-miscible oils.  I started sketching the lantern in, and—auuuggghhh! That is wwayyy to big.  It’s water-y. So I took a paper towel and wiped it out.  That’s better. I started putting in some of the structure of the waterfall, and the shadows un...

  What I’ve been working on in September/October: These are all 12x16 on canvas board. Not my favorite substrate, but I had them for a class I’m taking, so I’m using them up.   1. As of yet, Untitled.  This painting is one that I started some time back…and then painted over. For a class I’m waking right now in landscapes I started it again. The subject is an asequia north of Los Poblanos in Albuquerque, where I was supposed to be doing a training run (rather than, say, taking pictures). What I like about it: The left side of the ditch, and the reflections in the water. What I don’t like: The color of the ditch. It’s kind of a sick yellow white; I think I was to make it a big pinker. Or, maybe the shadows need to be bluer 2: Oak creek. This is a view of Oak Creek near Sedona, Az, in the spring. What I like about it: The shadow of the trees on the rapid. This was my teacher’s idea, and he painted them on my canvas. I was taken by surprise, as I don’t normally like peop...

The week between Christmas and New Years' my Patrone and I took a trip to Hawaii.  I love the water, and I love being in  the water, and so we had scheduled a scuba diving lesson, one of the things still on my bucket list. However, it was canceled because of a "rough, wintery day". In Hawaii.  This means, I've figure out, that it's cloudy and the wind is blowing.  Now, I've always shied away from painting water, especially waves. It just looks difficult. I took this picture from "flat island" or Popoi Island.   It's a tiny island, barely a dot even on a close up on Google Earth. We had kayaked out there in a rented kayak in choppy seas and wandered around on it.   My reference photo: Flat Island in Hawaii In taking this picture, I stood for quite some time trying to capture a large splash made by the choppy seas.   It didn't work. Every time I turned my back, BIG SPLASH. When I turned around, the best I got was the one above.  Nevertheless, ...