landscape with rocks

The other day in drawing class I just started playing around with my colored pencils. No plan in mind, just started cross-hatching on the page. Of course, usually when I have no plan in mind, I end up with a landscape of some kind, because that’s what I love doing most. Landscape with sky. So in the course of a couple of hours, I went from blank, white page to this soft, quiet landscape. I used a lot of cross-hatching, giving it this wonderful texture. I think it has a nice feeling of space and perspective. I probably used about fifteen or more colors on this, but I couldn’t even begin to remember which ones. I love the way it reminds me of a quiet, warm, summer day. From far away, those rocks look like a flock of sheep, which is kind of fun.

monochrome

Portraiture is not really my thing, most likely due largely to inexperience, non-practice, and undeveloped drawing skills, but recently we played around with faces in my watercolor class, working from photographs. This little blue watercolor is the result of a monochromatic value exercise in which we started out by painting only the shadows. I went for a combination of Winsor Blue and French Ultramarine, using for inspiration this photograph of my daughter taken a few decades ago. I just love the way her hair is flying around kind of willy-nilly, and the expression on her face, which is lifted just a bit. I created a black and white image of the original photograph and painted only the shadows. I came back in later and darkened up a few places, and consciously chose to not add any other color. I am not bothered by the fact that it looks nothing like the photograph, since it was not my goal to do a portrait, but rather just to see what would happen if I concentrated only on shadows. I like the way the negative and positive space work together, and that there is a rather ethereal quality to it.

landscaping

One Sunday morning in December, while listening to a math educator’s closing speech at a math conference at Asilomar, I was observing patterns in the building’s architecture while drawing in my sketchbook. (I had recently discovered that I hear better while drawing, but that’s a different topic.) I randomly started sketching landscapes among my patterns, and the idea for this mixed-media piece was born.

In my watercolor classes with N. Eric Oback at San Jose State University a lifetime ago, I had done a number of watercolors that mixed hard edges with textured colors. I’ve always loved that combination, and I could see clearly the direction I wanted to go with this idea.

I began by measuring and taping off the rectangles with artist’s tape and painted the landscape inside the panels. I was thinking early summer, with its various greens and touches of gold from fields of wildflowers, and a cloud-dotted sky. When the painting was dry, I removed the tape and just looked at it for a while. Originally, I had thought that this painting would have some minimalist splashes of neutral color stretching across/behind/through the panels, but that idea went away when I decided to extend the landscape instead. I retaped the outside edge of all the rectangles and extended the existing colors beyond the panels, but something wasn’t right and I wasn’t sure where to go next. I set it aside and then, after several days, I got an idea but was still unsure….

… so I photographed the work, printed out a couple of copies, and got out my colored pencils to see what I might do. I started cross-hatching on one edge, liked it, kept going, and eventually decided to go ahead and add colored pencil to the original. I got out my watercolor pencils and started the cross-hatching. My goal was to go darker but include the colors of the sky — the subtle pinks and yellows — and also bring in the greens and golds from the landscape. Using a variety of colors layered over each other gave this section the neutral “feel” I was looking for.

This piece is one of my favorites. I am very happy with the mesh of colors, the two different textures, the way the panels seem to grow out of the cross-hatching, and the accidental “sunshine” just over and through that second panel. I’m looking forward to doing a series of paneled landscapes with different shapes and sizes and colors. Coming soon…. maybe….

shadows

This colored pencil drawing evolved from a trip to Mt. Shasta to visit friends, from the carrying of and snapping of cameras out onto the snow, and my comment about the beauty of the trees’ shadows. My friend Doug later showed me what seemed like hundreds of photos of trees and shadows he had taken on the mountain, and he promised to send me some. One photo in particular stood out: a little cabin in the snow, at the foot of a rocky mountain, surrounded by trees. I printed it out, brought it to my drawing class, and made a quick pencil sketch:

After thinking about a few adjustments — move the cabin a little to the right, eliminate some of the trees and rocks — I transferred the main contour lines of the composition to bristol paper and proceeded to lay down a light layer of overall color…

… then continued to add color — darker values and a variety of color details in the trees, more detail in the rocks on the mountain, some very subtle coloring on the snow, and some purple added to the tree shadows. We decided to use this drawing for our Christmas card this year, which started me on a card-making project using several of my favorite watercolors and drawings.

Not a bad drawing, overall, and I think very worthy of Doug’s original photograph.

sunrise

Sometimes I take a break from working on paintings where I am trying to make water sparkle, or make trees look like the sun is shining through, where I am focused on creating the subtle colors of clouds or just the exact way a shadow might look in a group of rocks. Sometimes I let my brush do a little dance on the paper, without a preconceived plan — just getting into a flow — letting the brush do the work.

If I’m lucky, I end up with a happy little accident that speaks to me and asks me to continue. Such a thing happened with this little painting.

One day while waiting for another watercolor to dry, I took an eighth sheet of paper (7×11) and simply let a round brush create a few blue and purple lines. Just for fun. I looked at it a bit, decided I liked the shape, and added the drippy part at the bottom (a technique I learned to love in my watercolor classes with N. Eric Oback at San Jose State University in the late 60s). Later, I put it on a shelf where I could just look at it for a few days. Hmmm, I thought… it seems like a landscape to me! After several days of of lateral observation, I decided to replicate the drippy part with a hint of yellow … just a bit of sunshine, then added just the tiniest touch of orange peeking over the mountain.

There is a school of thought that says the whole paper should be covered with paint, but I am a real fan of white space. I love working with negative space, letting white space become just as important in a composition as the colored space. In this little painting, I think the white space is just enough to balance the color. I love the composition, the inference of landscape and sunrise, and the minimalist use of color.

watercolor collage

One of the things I love most about watercolor is the way colors blend in surprising ways. Sometimes I just enjoy the color for what it is and forget about trying to represent anything tangible. Several months ago when I was testing the paint in some old tubes of watercolors, I played around with some warm and cool washes, both on the same page in a pad of watercolor paper. The areas were separated by a section of white with a hard edge. When it was dry, I tossed it into the same pile as my finished paintings.

When my watercolor class was going to do some collage work, I went through my pile of finished work, pulling out the less successful pieces, and grabbed this little color test. I thought it might be good for cutting up to add to other works.

On a whim, I ripped the paper in half, just to one side of that white edge, and glued the two pieces onto another test piece that had a stripe of color wash. Then I played with it, pulling off more pieces, moving the parts closer together and further apart, and finally ending up with this little abstract-y landscape-y piece. I love the way the colors work together in the finished piece.

highway 70

I love painting and drawing landscapes, and I get a lot of inspiration from pictures, so when I drive, I keep my camera handy. It is a little Canon point and shoot model, and I’ve become fairly adept at snapping landscapes and clouds with one hand on the steering wheel. And no, I don’t do this in heavy traffic, or on windy roads, or when driving near steep drop-offs. Like the old saying goes, I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.

This particular spot on Highway 70 just north of Oroville is a favorite “snap and shoot” location. The road is wide and fairly empty, and it’s easy to slow the car down, open the window, zoom in, and snap. Here’s the inspiration for the painting:

These were taken in March, April, and June. When I paint, I don’t try to make things exact; I just like to play with color and visual texture and emphasize the layering of the landscape. And then there is always the sky, and the big decision before I start whether to focus on the clouds or the land. Here, I chose the land.