Escape

Another early morning dealing with unannounced construction guys. The details aren’t worth relaying anymore. Suffice to say, the kitchen reconstruction lingers endlessly on. Long story -> short: I went off to paint for a few hours with Karen.

We wandered (see Descanso) and settled on a spot with great views in every direction in the middle of the rose garden. It was a glorious, sunny, cloudless day, and the gardens were lush with vibrant color.



We drew and painted (smeared paint around), and caught up with each other. As the sun dropped lower and lower, the sunlight bathed the trees, the leaves and blooms with a warm, golden glow. The shadows grew longer and longer, and took on an even more lazy purple tint.



Here are my sketches and a few postcard paintings:

I started with some watercolor postcards. I want to play with the media more, to better control the intensity of the pigment and to start working on larger paper. I went back over these with w/c pencils later to work in darker colors.




I’ve been doing this modified contour-drawing thing - - if you quilt, it’s roughly in the spirit of continuous-line quilting. I’ve been playing with it for a little while, trying to get different textures to read. I think it’s starting to make a little more sense in this drawing; yet another gnarly tree!

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This is the last sketch I did. The watercolors frustrated me a bit, and I wanted to be able to more clearly and succinctly depict some of the textures and work in some darker values to show more dramatic contrast.




Here's the updated Descanso 10-2006 flickr photos

It was a great afternoon, such a perfect escape from the insanity, even if for just a few hours. We should all remember to get out, enjoy the sunshine and all the beauty that Fall has to offer.