In case these before and after posts are putting you to sleep, let’s skip the chit-chat and go right to the paintings.
The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
Plein air painting #3 was the only one I did that day because I spent the morning trying to solve my easel problem. A new friend at the painting retreat lent me a pochade box, which needed a tripod to hold it up if I didn’t want to paint sitting with it on my lap. I drove to another town and spent time trying to find a tripod to support the wooden box. After several attempts to find a tripod to hold the box (WHY WAS I AT A MALL SHOPPING AT BIG BOX STORES WHEN THE BEACH WAS CALLING??), I decided it was a waste of time. So I drove back to Asilomar, found a turnout, did an impressive job of parallel parking, set up my stuff at this view, and started painting.
I decided that I’d had enough frustration for one day, so I climbed down to the beach, and took a few more photos. If this painting makes your eyes bleed, please forgive me.
Phew. Much better!
Looks as if I forgot to sign it.
The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
This is the second plein air painting I did in Monterey. I set up in the shade by the path to Asilomar Beach (another struggle against that easel), and this time I was determined to do a better painting.
This painting gave me hope that I might be able to paint plein air. It also gave me time to decide to look for a trash can large enough to stuff the easel into.
After I got home, I retouched it and finished it to this level.
This one deserved to be signed.
The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
This is the first plein air painting I did in Monterey. We set up on Asilomar Beach, and I tried to concentrate on painting when I just wanted to put my feet in the water and enjoy the waves. Instead, I tried to paint while the waves kept moving and my easel kept fighting against me.
Then it was just too hot and frustrating to keep standing there, so I packed it up and took this back to my room.
After I got home, I retouched it and finished it to this level.
That’s odd—I still haven’t signed it. I wonder if I can make it better. . . maybe in another year or two. I’ll sign it next time I am painting.
While at the Mural Gallery for my November shift, I painted. My goal was to be productive in between customers by completing some of the plein air paintings from the week in Monterey.
Worked out pretty well.
As I was moving everything out to my car, I looked east and remembered many reason I always loved being in Exeter: tractors in downtown, the water tower with EXETER on it, seeing Sawtooth and Homer’s Nose, trees with fall color, the Post Office, all visible from where I used to have my studio.
One last view in case you didn’t get enough photos today.
The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
Krista asked me to paint again with her at the airport bridge in Three Rivers on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Before I went, I hung out with Jackson a little bit.
He wasn’t very hungry because he let the gopher live. Didn’t even pounce.
I drove to the same place with its multiple No Parking signs.
This time, I had a tripod that the little cigar box pochade attached to. Gear management is one of the great challenges of plein air painting. I won’t be buying a $700-1000 easel set-up for plein air painting unless something really changes in my abilities and interests. But I will continue to experiment and try various arrangements.
My roommate in Monterey won this brush clip in a raffle and passed it to me. It’s pretty useful, but I only use one or two brushes when I paint plein air and don’t plan on needing more. I don’t like to own stuff that I don’t need, so I passed it to Krista, who is very determined to learn this method of painting.
With a tripod, I was able to stand to paint and use my stool as a shelf. The big wooden box was passed to me by a friend who changed his mind about wanting to paint, and it is a handy way to carry my stuff. It weighs more than I’d like, and it seems as if it opens backwards, so it may go the way of all excess equipment—into the hands of someone else who needs it. The verdict isn’t in yet.
This isn’t too bad, and maybe I will like it after fixing and finishing it in the painting workshop at home.
When the sun was off the scene, we started packing, and I turned around and saw this.
It’s all about the light. Always.
One thing that is happening to my abilities as a result of plein air painting is that I am noticing new scenes to paint, looking at sunlight instead of just the subject matter. Maybe this alone is worth the time, effort, and money spent on this adventure.
Bike Tree, 24×24″, $1400
For about 2 years, my friend Krista has been asking me to paint with her in Three Rivers. Last week we had an entire day without electricity, phones, internet, so it seemed like a good time to leave home and paint outside. Besides, it is always a pleasure to hang out with a friend, especially outside on a nice afternoon in our scenic foothill town.
I thought about places to paint, and it is tricky when every shoulder of the road is marked with NO PARKING signs. I decided that I didn’t care, and if anyone wanted to tow Fernando away, we would have a conversation about it, and it would turn out just fine. (Our sheriff is an artist.)
This view shows the curve on the right side of the road as it heads to the bridge.
This view shows the tall sycamore trees on the left.
I wanted both, so did a sketch to see if I could squish them both in. Good thing you know that I can draw, or you might be a little worried about the quality of this sketch.
Here is my substandard plein air equipment, perfectly functional for my limited interest in this method of putting paint on canvas.
Here we go, another sketchy messy beginning.
The light changed quickly, and then all the color was gone.
That’s fine, because I took the painting as far as I could figure out while painting on location. I just don’t understand how to smash all sorts of details together; maybe someday I will, but I can’t imagine that I would like the results. I think I will like this painting after reworking it in the painting workshop at home.
Krista and I had a great time together; it is very likely that we will do this again.
This is Asilomar State Beach, the first place I set up an easel to paint plein air, which means feet in the sand, wind in my hair, hair in my eyes, and easel fighting gravity.
This is my painting of Asilomar Beach, brought into submission in the confines of my painting workshop (i.e. studio).
This is Carmel Beach, voted the most beautiful beach in California or the US or ???, as first painted while sitting on a park bench, balancing a pochade box on my lap with my palette of paints on the bench beside, all the while wishing I was down on the sand with my feet in the water, minus the painting.
This is my painting of Carmel Beach, brought into submission in the painting workshop, with the able assistance of some photos where things hold still for a pair of minutes and color can be actually seen rather than squinted and guessed at in the bright sun (or deep shade)
But I’m perfectly neutral on the topic, as you can see.
P.S. At the opening reception of my show Simply Home, an acquaintance of many years said to me, “I’m going to tell you something that will make you mad.” Then he proceeded to say, “You draw better than you paint.”
What would he have said if he’d seen my plein air paintings before I retouched them??
CACHE Gallery hours are Fridays 1:30-4:00, Saturdays 10:00-4:00, Sundays noon-4:00.
P.S. This painting is the one chosen for the publicity for the show. Yes, it is oil on wrapped canvas, but I’m tired of typing that and fairly certain that you are tired of reading it too.
The week in Monterey was a great enjoyable time, and also a real learning experience. So many beautiful things to paint, it almost didn’t matter if we drove anywhere or just stayed put.
Plein air has never appealed to me, and it was stinkin’ hard, but I think I got better as the week progressed. I don’t love the process or the results enough to invest in a good easel/tripod set up (those run $700-$1000!) I’m still not convinced that it improves one’s skill; maybe it does if plein air is the preferred style, but honestly, I look at those paintings by people who are a Big Deal and think that someone needs to find a good optometrist.
So, I am fully committed to being a studio painter. It is good to have decided who I am, finally, at age 65, after 18-1/2 years of oil painting. Maybe someday I’ll get a wild hare and try to paint quick, thick, and sloppy slick (but I may not sign those).
However, I don’t consider the time spent painting plein air as a waste of time. It taught me a way to paint a little bit faster, how to focus more on the composition, that my easel was a major annoyance, and now I have the ability to paint plein air, should anyone ask me to do so (more for the process than the product).
You may have heard me profess my love of the beach in the past a time or two. I ordered a stack of snapshots of the beach and waves, along with some smooth 5×7″ boards (called “gessobord”) to practice painting waves and beach scenes. IN THE STUDIO!! FROM PHOTOGRAPHS!
BECAUSE I AM A STUDIO PAINTER!
So there.
Among the 100 or so folks in Monterey at Fall Color Week, there were fantastic painters along with rank amateurs: my work fell solidly in the middle. I am a studio painter, and this whole thing stretched me. I could go on and on about what I learned, but I suspect that if you are not an artist, it will cause you to click off this page, maybe (horrors!) even unsubscribe (but ask me privately if you have questions about the value of plein air painting).
And then there are my paintings. I did 10 total, but only showed 8 of them in the room where we placed them each evening.
And thus we conclude our long series of blog posts “Plein Air Painting in Monterey”.
Now we can return to our regular blogging topics, and maybe I’ll actually finish some of these paintings to where I might confidently put them up for sale.
Here is today’s painting, done in the studio (because I was NOT going to carry my bad easel 4 miles), for Simply Home, a solo show at CACHE.
