Sonoma Plein Air

I spent last week painting up in Sonoma County for the Sonoma Plein Air event, which I have been fortunate to attend for the past 8 years. It is a wonderful event for the artists, and hopefully for the residents and patrons who so generously put up the artists in their homes and guesthouses, while we roam about the valley and paint. The weather was less than ideal for the 5 days we were allotted to paint, with rain, drizzle, wind, overcast skies, being predominant. Thursday was the lone exception to that. You should also take a look at the blogs of Terry Miura and Robin Purcell for their perspectives on the week. You might also check out the work of Paul Kratter on his website and you'll be able to see some of his work for the week. Here's a few of the pieces I did with some notes.


The sun often rose into a diffuse cloud cover, which softened and attenuated the light considerably in brightness. I abandoned another painting to start this one, when I realized I wasn't going to get the lighting I was expecting.



Scenes of this sort are common to the lower end of the valley, as the land is sectioned into vineyards and small dairies, bordered by roads and windbreaks of Eucalyptus trees. The weather during this week was rather dynamic, so whatever lighting situation one might begin a piece with was unlikely to be there midway through it. A lot of my work was done in the rain, or a combination of direct light and overcast, which lent my work a patchy quality, as well as a rather grey nature, as is represented in this image. The most interesting thing about this piece for me was the visit of a very large king snake, which came slithering towards me, flicking it's tongue, and eventually disappearing under the mat of dead grass a yard from my feet into a hole, perhaps in search of a meal.




This was painted up at Sugarloaf State Park, a few miles north of Glen Ellen. I have visited it the last few years when I come up to paint, as it is often sunny when the valley a thousand feet below is shrouded in morning fog. Adobe Creek runs through the park, carving a small channel, and exposing a range of boulders and smaller rocks. There are other types of views as well, but I have a fondness for boulders, water, and foliage patterns, which this view had in abundance.



I had spied a small waterfall when driving up to the park, and went back in the afternoon to paint it.



Also painted at Sugarloaf Park, trying to leverage my success of the previous day. Instead, the light was gray, and I went looking for qualities that compelled me to paint. This is a fragment of a landscape... really only a few square feet in area, but I liked the contrast in the shadows below the beautiful hues of the mossy root, the gradient of greens on the grass, as it curved upwards from the gully to face the sky, as well as the tones on the rock. Even the dead oak leaves started to interest me with the way they broadcast their orientation to the sky through a compressed range of value and temperature shifts. In such a small portion of nature, all sorts of subtle (and not so subtle) cues were operating about light and form, the only exception being atmosphere. But why would it be any other way? The 'rules' apply regardless of scale... there's the lesson!

Off to Sonoma and more regional shrubbery

I'll be headed later today to Sonoma county for the annual Sonoma Plein Air festival, and will be exhibiting a week's worth of work in the county next Saturday, May 22, in Sonoma Plaza, along with many other fellow artists such as Terry Miura, Paul Kratter, Randy Sexton, Carol Hesse-Low, and Tim Horn. Below are a few pieces from the last month or so from over my back fence, and one from the shadowed recesses of Pinehurst Rd., which is awash in forget-me-nots for a brief period of time. Hope to see some of you in the plaza next Saturday. Hope we get some good weather, or mist and local color will be prevalent.

The Temptations of Complexity

In looking for subjects to paint on the hills and ravines around my neck of the woods, the combined textures and forms of various plants are intriguing to my eye, but also a challenge, as certain shapes and sizes are hard to execute with the blunt instrument of the pastel stick, and the variety of foliage textures can be daunting. In facing a 'persian rug' of patterns, I look for a breakup of the major shapes of the image plane to have a design that I can hang everything on regardless of the subject. I'm finding that value patterns, whether strictly defined by the effect of light and shadow, or mass of a form, or some combination, are what I'm relying on for this underlying structural support. There's a lot of drawing problems I'm encountering in these pieces, so much more work is needed on my part to really decode and even accurately get the proportions of certain forms down.
Tree trunks are analogous to the human figure in gesture, pose, subtlety, etc. I'm struggling with the simplest statements of this. Ferns are amazingly elegant, and I can only hint at that right now... 'there's a fern here'.. There's an endless variety of ideas to explore out in the big colorful 'mess' of nature. Spring is here...everyone get out and paint!

The green goes on

In a few months the world I'm painting will be shades of gold and violet along with the green.
I worked today on the hill behind my house for several hours and did three pieces, two of which were
off the cuff challenges: a random clump of grass, and a tree shadow coming off of a trunk on a steep hill.
They were worthwhile exercises, but didn't bear fruit. I have a lot more to learn about painting grass... and tree trunks.
The other image in this post is from last week, looking into a shadowed space on the hill with the cherry blossoms
poking up.

Beyond the back fence

Still studying the complexities of trees, shrubs and grasses on the hill behind our house. It is an interesting challenge to try and imply what's going on. I have been looking at some of Richard Schmid's work, and I think it has infected me a bit. He often paints very complex trees in front of equally complex architecture, and does it beautifully. He sets the bar pretty high for his edge control, as well as a mixture of very tight, and very loose handling of paint in the same image. At this point, I'm just trying to paint a tree in front of itself. Research continues.

Spring is coming

Though it is only February, yesterday was warm, sunny, and dry, so I took a long hike on the Rocky Ridge Trail out of Rancho Laguna Park in Moraga. This is a path that runs through East Bay watershed, and has easements through several parcels of grazing land up to Rocky Ridge, which is a few thousand feet in elevation. I only walked in about 2.5 miles, but had plenty of climbing and descending, as I was curious about the views towards the ridge. The light was pretty flat in mid afternoon, looking in that direction, so I started hiking back and became intrigued by a view to the southwest, looking downslope and towards the sun, which backlit all the grasses, turning them insanely green, as well as illuminating the atmosphere tremendously.

I've also been painting closer to home, as in my own backyard, or wandering on the hill behind my house. There is a large buckeye tree that appears to be dead every year, and then miraculously blooms in spring. Uncanny. I am intrigued by that patterning of the branches as well as the different tangles of foliage one encounters at close range amongst the oaks, blackberry vines, dormant fennel stalks, and lurking (and abundant) poison oak. Here's a few studies looking at some of those subjects.

Summer Pastel Workshop in the Sierra Buttes

I'm going to be giving a 4 day pastel workshop at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus mid-summer, from July 26-30. Class size is limited to 12. The field campus is run by San Francisco State, and is located in the Sierra Buttes, along the north fork of the Yuba River. I took an astronomy class up there about 4 years ago, and have wanted to teach a workshop there ever since. There are numerous small lakes in glacially carved granite basins that are very accessible by car, or an easy hike. The region is like a mini-Sierra buffet of beautiful scenery. Accommodations are available at the campus. The campus itself is composed of large tents on platforms spread along a sloping river drainage, with a large dining hall/classroom building. Hot showers and bathrooms are provided. It is rustic but quite comfortable. The cost of the workshop itself is $400, the accommodations are extra, and vary according to the options you can choose, involving a meal plan, as well as whether you bring your own tent, or decide to stay elsewhere, but dine on campus, etc.

There will be some lectures, daily plein air work and demos, as well as one-on-one time. This is an opportunity for some immersion in the challenges and rewards of painting on site, capturing light at different times of the day. Painting in the Sierra is a wonderful sensory experience... the character of light at higher altitudes , the glacial basins of granite, the range of color of in the creeks and lakes. I am always inspired by working in the mountains and I hope you'll come away with impressions of your own that will endure.

Here's the link to the website for the classes offered this summer. Just click on the courses link to find a class description.
All signups have to be done through the website, so they can keep track of the number, but I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

Sierra Nevada Field Campus