Spring blossom

Gorgeous! - that was the day - rather than my artwork! After a bit of a hiatus (due to vacations and colds!) I'm back to painting. Today we visited the Sunnyvale Heritage Museum and Orchard. The planets must have aligned just so for today to be so perfect. The trees were in blossom, the mustard glowed yellow around the base of the gnarled tree trunks, and the sun shone intermittently between colorful clouds. The orchard was such an appealing view - unfortunately my painting does not do it justice. After a chatty lunch with other plein air painters I did a quick sketch of the gray barn, then went into the museum. I don't normally bother with guided tours, preferring to make my own way around museums. However, this time I got chatting to one of the docents, Jim, and he gave me a wonderful tour and potted history of the Murphy family and Sunnyvale. I learned a lot and Jim did a great job of answering my questions and pointing out items of particular interest to me. Its a great little museum in a lovely setting.

Picchetti Winery

Picchetti Winery barns and farmhouse
View of a distant vineyard in fall colors
This week's sketches are from our Hike and Sketch up at Picchetti Winery. There is a little hiking trail from behind the winery, out along the hillside, with great views of the surrounding hills. The day was perfect - a little cool in the shade, but lovely in the sunshine.Bridge over a dry streambed
Foggy view of the distant Almaden hills



Picchetti Farmhouse

Asilomar, Sept 23rd

The CA coast is gorgeous at this time of year. Today's visit to the Point Pinos area of Monterey was a fun day of painting and enjoying the spectacular scenery. It can be intimidating to paint huge panoramas, so I started with some little brush pen sketches to get a feel for the place.

We set up on the beach and looked out over the sea. On turning round I was grabbed by a view of some ice plants cascading down over the rocks. Above was a beautiful blue sky with the occasional seagull hovering in the sea breeze. I thought it would make an interesting painting, but of course the seagulls don't hang around so it will have to be a studio painting. I did some sketches of the idea and took photos of the birds.

We lunched overlooking the golf course, then moved up to the Point Pinos Lighthouse. This quaint little building looked very paintable, but as I started my composition sketch I quickly realized I was way too close to the building. The dark green rectangle was supposed to contain the whole lighthouse! Feeling overwhelmed by the task, I moved on to a cute little shed behind the lighthouse which nestled amongst some interesting trees. I was conscious of making the shed (my focal point) slightly off to one side, but the shed had other ideas when I started drawing and plonked itself right in the center of the paper. Darn! Despite this I was really pleased with the way it came out (see top of page).

Later we moved further along the coast to where a sea lion had spent the day sunbathing on a big rock out at sea. It seemed like a picture perfect opportunity, but he was quite far away. I did two sketches, the second using binoculars. My last painting was an attempt at the crazy rocks which line the coast here. Rocks are quite a challenge!

The Presidio, September 19th

Last week we had an impromptu trip up to San Francisco. The idea was to sketch the views at the Presidio and visit the CA Watercolor Assoc. exhibition at the Officers Club. The Presidio was a bit fog bound when we got there, so the views were not extensive! However, we were undeterred and found plenty to paint. The exhibition was very instructive. We had fun critiquing all the paintings and picking out our favorites.

Villa Montalvo

The plein air painting has been sadly neglected of late, and I only have one painting and a sketch from this week. Despite early fog on my side of the valley, Villa Montalvo had glorious sunshine and blue skies. I've painted the house before so I wandered down to a new area - a little cactus garden. A small group of children were painting in the area too and had wonderful big sheets of paper and watercolors to play with. They spent more time wandering around than painting, but they were quite enthusiastic. One young lady looked at my painting and said "its coming together nicely"! She may be right, but I had to leave before it was complete and now I must finish it as "homework" i.e. it will stay in its present state forever! I liked my quick brushpen sketch more.

Stevens Creek Park

Today we enjoyed perfect temperatures and views of the turquoise waters of the Stevens Creek Reservoir. We had the company of ducks and kayakers, and a soft breeze rustling the leaves. In my relaxed mood, the distant clank and rumble of the diggers and trucks in the nearby quarry was just another kind of music on the breeze.I started with a couple of sketches with my brushpens, then launched in with my watercolors. I was pleased with the colors I made, but my watercolor composition is a little disappointing. I was intending to put some ducks in - maybe that would help it.Just before left, I was attracted to the contrast on one of the picnic benches, so I did a quick sketch of the lights and darks.

Goldsmiths Seeds, Gilroy, July 8

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of plein air painting after my trip to Alaska. These are from our visit to Goldsmiths Seeds in Gilroy. Goldsmiths was taken over in 2008 and the new company name, Syngenta, is now prominent - which doesn’t sound quite as wholesome. This was borne out when we had set up for painting looking out over rows of pretty flowers towards the hills and a couple of colorful barns. An employee came over and asked us to move as they had just sprayed the flower beds behind us with pesticide and they didn’t want us to get sick!

There were plenty of flowers on the other side of the property though so most of us lugged our stuff over there and painted. The day had started off cool but cloudy skies soon gave way to clear blue. I prefer a little cloud in the sky, its just too boring to paint a plain blue wash for the sky!


Plein air painting is now down to twice a month, so in theory there won't be so much to post. However, I am seized with the desire to do some studio painting - so we'll see it that happens!