History San Jose Museum

This is engine 1215, retired in 1957 I believe, but revitalized in my painting! 

Kat and I went on a little sketching visit to History San Jose and found some interesting things to paint.

Another "retired" vehicle! Poor rusty old Ford, but still attractive from an artistic point of view.

Sunnyvale Baylands Hike and Sketch

We had a foggy start for this Hike and Sketch, but it soon turned sunny and quite warm.  If it wasn't for the bare tree branches you wouldn't know it was winter! 

These two tiny sketches were done with watercolor pencils.

Working from plein air sketches in the studio

 

I'm working in my studio from plein air sketches I did last week, trying to work in a loose, washy style.  I wanted something atmospheric and suggestive, without drawing every detail. Usually when I work plein air I draw with a pen, but in these painting's I am drawing with the brush and doing more negative painting initially. Direct painting like this makes it harder to get proportions correct, but in doing the painting several times over I should figure things out! The subject matter is very complex so although I peeked at my photos periodically, I didn't have them in front of me when I painted.  I tried to be more focused on what is going on with the paint, rather than reproducing a photo.

In this painting I felt the figures would be a nice focal point and give some scale. This is done on Arches Palatine paper, which has a smooth surface.

Sikh Gurdwara San Jose, plein air and studio paintings

 Our visit to the Sikh Gurdwara Temple in San Jose was a feast for the eyes.  The temple sits up in the hills with a panoramic view of the valley.  There are beautiful arches, columns and domes, plus fountains and the hills behind. Way too much to take in on one visit!  It was a little chilly, but I did my best with some sketches and a little sketchbook painting of the domes.

 This last sketch was done later in the afternoon, the shadows changed minute by minute so I tried to work very quickly.

 Today I worked in my studio,from my sketches, trying some loose impressions of the temple just with paint - no preliminary drawing.

Almaden Quicksilver Hike and Sketch

Rotary Furnace for turning ore into Mercury

Jenny and I had a wonderful hike in Almaden Quicksilver Park last Wednesday. What an interesting place that is! There is still a lot of machinery and some buildings remaining from its old mining days and the park authorities have done a good job of putting up informative boards to tell you all about it. Jenny had discovered this wonderful furnace building with its rusted metal pipes and knew that I would want to paint it.
The furnace part is the long pipe on the right. Originally it had a building around it. Crushed ore was fed into the furnace and heated. The gases were condensed using the pipes on the left behind the little white shed, and liquid mercury was the end product.  It must have been horrendous working there with such toxic substances.
On the ground near the furnace I found the skeleton of what must have been a deer - sure proof that the warning signs about mountain lions should be heeded!

Chimney at Church Hill

This lovely fireplace and chimney are all that remain of an old building on Church Hill.  It looked so incongruous amongst the trees.  Of course it was surrounded by a fence, but the joy of painting is that you can leave out boring stuff like that!

Teaser for our "Mother/Daughter" Open Studio!

This is just some of my artwork which will be on display Saturday for my first Open Studio!  I'm very excited - especially as some wonderful people have actually said they will come! Yay - THANKYOU!! :)
I have already sold one painting but I have lots more work to show and Kat, my daughter, will have her lovely posters and cuddly crafts on display too.  I think we'll put on a good show.  See you there!

Murphy Street, Sunnyvale

Another great day plein air painting, this time on Murphy Street in Sunnyvale.  We arrived before the stores had really opened so it was fairly quiet, although the wonderful aromas from all the restaurants had my stomach growling before I even started painting!  Above is my view before stores opened, below is the same view after they opened.  My second painting was much quicker, looser and more fun (for me anyway!)  I loved the mannequins that the Isobella Boutique put out on the street.

Open Studio in December!

It's been 10 years since I last did an open studio, but I've been painting a lot this year so I've decided it's time!  My super talented daughter, Kat will also display her work.  So come along and see what we've been up to this year.

You are welcome at my house on Saturday December 6th, 11am - 5pm.  Look out for an email from me with details.

Clos Le Chance Winery, San Martin, in the rain

Rust colored vines, moist gray clouds

Fermenting grapes season the air

This is a gorgeous spot, even in the rain!  The weather couldn't make up it's mind - rainy, cloudy, rainy, oh sun for one minute, then rainy again... the trials of plein air.  My sketch below was the first one, which mother nature decided to have a heavy hand in! Raindrops really took over and it looks for all the world like I threw a ton of salt on it!

Santa Theresa Park

Sketches from a hike last week at Santa Theresa.  The clouds threatened rain, but it held off and just gave me some misty hills to paint.  This park is great for hiking and getting different views, but its rather rocky underfoot so I was glad I wore boots.

Veggies at Ardenwood Historic Farm

Yet another perfect plein air painting day.  Ardenwood is a great place to capture pumpkins (above), but I was firstly drawn to the sweeping lines of lettuce and cabbage as I drove in.  The colors were very striking and I tried to keep them as simple as possible in my painting. I really wanted a much longer piece of paper.  I have recently been painting on a 18 x 36 inch canvas and that extreme landscape size was what I needed here. Brad had the right idea working across two pages in his sketchbook!

Moffett Air Field

There's always something interesting going on at Moffett Field.  Yesterday there was some firefighting practice behind Hangar #1.  Flames, smoke, pour on the hoses... then do it all over again some minutes later.  We don't usually see such drama at our paintsites!

Acrylic landscapes

I have spent a couple of days in the studio working over some old paintings and making some new ones. Every now and then I get very frustrated with watercolor so I switch back to acrylics for a change. The painting above is from a photo and memory of Don Edwards Nature Reserve looking across at the Coyote Hills. Worked mostly wet in wet with brush and palette knife.

This painting is a poured piece with additional brush/palette knife work.  It's been in my studio for a long time and started out life as something very different.  It finally told me what it wanted to be! There are two poured layers on it and some different gel mediums for texture.

Syngenta Flowers, Gilroy

 Another lovely spot to paint.  The rows of flowers provided a gorgeous sweep of color leading into the distance.  I'm too impatient to paint individual flowers so I just went for a general feeling of color. 

Later I decided to sketch the corn, as it has such interesting long wavy leaves.

After lunch I this view of the flowers and various greenhouses caught my eye so I stayed to paint another quick one in my sketchbook.

Oracle Buildings

I had lunch with my daughter the other day and she works close to the Oracle buildings so I did some sketching while I was there.  Its a lovely spot for walking and enjoying the views.

Hike and Sketch Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge

I've been very remiss about posting on my blog so this is another catchup session.  Here are sketches I did on our recent Hike and Sketch at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge.  This was always one of my favorite places but I had never hiked here before.  I really enjoyed the hike and the beautiful views.

Snooker and Bones

I was just in Boston and New Jersey and managed some sketching.  Above are wall decorations at the club where my husband and son played snooker!

Snooker gesture sketches.

The next day I visited the Harvard Natural History Museum and drew some skulls and fossil skeletons.  The museum has some wonderful things on display including glass flowers, which it is famous for, and now glass sea creatures including models of octopus, jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

Bighorn Sheep, stuffed and skeleton

Kronosaurus - 42 foot long pleisiosaur, from Australia.  Wouldn't like to have met one of those! Chomp, chomp!

Glyptodon - cousin to the armadillo - but MUCH larger - like 2 tons!

Beautiful Oregon

Last week I visited Sue in Ashland, Oregon, and had a wonderful time hiking and painting on Mt Ashland.  Sunshine, blue skies, and millions of wildflowers of every description... it was paradise!
Above, is the plein air sketch I did.

We worked in Sue's studio the following day from our sketches and imagination.  Mt Shasta was large in my mind, so I made it bigger on the paper! We were trying to work in a loose, washy style.

Sketches from the San Francisco Zoo

Indian Rhino - minus his horn

Maribu Stork and Zebras

Sketching animals is such a wonderful challenge as they don't often keep still unless they are asleep.  We sketched with pen, then broke out the watercolors and I really enjoyed drawing with the brush.  I used an Escoda 20 round which has a great point and will make the finest lines and hold lots of paint.

I felt bad for the Maribu Stork, who is a rather ugly fellow and all the kids squealed with horror to look at him.  Certainly he has a face only a mother could love, but I liked him because he was so curiously odd looking.

This tiger was asleep - so we thought we could get away with painting him - but no he wakes up as soon as the paints are out and moves away!

We watched the giraffes being fed, then moved on to sketching the gorillas, which are one of my favorite animals

The kangaroos were all sleeping when we got to them - some of them just lounging on their backs!

The hippo (Brian Wilson) was the star of the day - just doing all sorts of fun things to entertain the crowd.  He loved to show off his big teeth!