Japan

Here are my sketches from a recent trip to Kyoto, Japan.

 This is at Kiyomizudera Temple, Kyoto. A wonderful temple up in the hills. We approached it through a beautiful mausoleum with thousands of gravestones huddled together on the hillsides. This was my first sketch, done in high heat and humidity.

 Two views of Nijo Castle, which was across the road from our hotel.  This fortified home of the Shogun had "Nightingale" floors which squeaked as you walked on them so that no assassins could creep up on the Shogun! The top sketch is the entrance gate. Where I sat to paint that was mosquito heaven and I got eaten alive.

 Fushimi Inari Shrine. I visited this beautiful shrine in the rain. These lovely Torii gates create an orange corridor up hill through the trees. At this spot I set up my stool and huddled under my umbrella with my backpack between my knees, sketchbook on lap and palette and brush in hand. It was very tricky to balance everything - not having enough hands! At that point I realized my water was still in my pack, so I stuck my palette out in the rain and tilted the umbrella to get more. Its surprising how much water you need to paint with! This was a lovely spot, peaceful, with colors, orange green, black, and the gentle dripping rain. A couple passing by looked at me in amazement - probably thought I was crazy.

Heian Garden - less is more

Heian Jingu Shrine, Kyoto. The roof were very complex. The dragon is a water fountain.

Heian Garden covered bridge

 These three sketches were done at the Heian Jingu Shrine. When I sat to paint the covered bridge above lots of Japanese ladies kept stopping to see what I was doing. I didn't understand much of what they said, but they were all very friendly and admired my sketchbook.

This last little sketch is the Ebisugawa Bridge over a little walking path and stream that ran alongside the main road in front of the hotel. Again the mosquitos got me - despite wearing tons of insect repellant. This was a popular spot for dog walkers and joggers.

La Petit Trianon, DeAnza College

 DeAnza College has a sunken garden and some lovely urns on the walls above. This one gave me  a peek of the La Petit Trianon building behind.

The garden has a great geometric stone fountain in the center which is always fun to try and paint.

Pete's Harbor

Studio painting on paper

Above is my second attempt at this scene - done in the studio from my plein air painting.

Plein air painting on watercolor canvas

Pete's Harbor is a favorite place of mine to paint and last Thursday I had high hopes of creating a good painting on watercolor canvas.  Unfortunately my plein air mojo has left me and it was a bit of a disaster!  The first painting I washed off (great thing about the watercolor canvas!) because the composition was bad. Then I had another go after lunch and that was only a little better.  I had drawn on the canvas with a pencil and that was a bad mistake because second time around I ended up with a scribbled boat floating in the middle of my sky. I had to paint a big pink cloud over it!

Rusty Stuff

I've been attending Kay Duffy's drop-in art class at Hakone Gardens and having a lot of fun with watercolors. Two weeks ago we did rusty stuff using lots of different things like wax paper, salt, cardboard etc., to create texture. Here's my  piece.

Carmel

I spent a couple of days in the wonderful company of other women artists down in Carmel. 

On day One we went to Point Lobos and saw a couple of elderly people watching the crabs in the tide pools

A view of Carmel Valley Ranch from the Organic Garden

Lovers Point Beach

The beach was a wonderful place for people watching. Lots of little children jumped in and out of the waves.  Sue and I found some wonderful kelp and stuff on the beach and fun making a beach collage with it!

Kelp - all sorts of interesting textures and colors!

Sketches from Boston - June

Back in June I visited Boston and managed a few pen sketches.

Courtyard of the Aloft Hotel Lexington

Citgo Sign - famous Boston Landmark

View of Harvard Bridge and Prudential Center from Memorial Drive

More mucking about with acrylics

Foil piece

Today Sue and I had another artistic get together to see what more we could do with our crazy acrylic pieces. We decided to utilize sketches we already had. I added a drawing of a deer to my foil piece. It was a challenge as there is a lot of rough texture on it so the form is still a little vague and the crackle paste I put on last time is a bit dominant yet.

Deer Hunters

On my other piece I had black gessoed over the initial trials and then put a washy layer of white gesso with cling film on that. Once that dried I sketched the deer in and started painting.  As it developed I began to see figures in the background and am in the process of bringing them out.  I added some foil to this piece.  It will get further layers of paint - and depending on how it comes out it may either be finished or gessoed again!
I like the foil technique a lot so I've been going around the house and garden taking foil impressions of anything I can find. All silly fun!