Into the Woods

Eaton Canyon, 4" x 6", Gouache and Watercolor

I went for a hike with my buddy Vahe today to go plein air painting at Eaton Canyon. Spent a couple of hours painting this scene in the shade while gnats tried to nibble my face off.

Surf's Up

El Matador State Beach, Malibu, CA

El Matador State Beach, Malibu, CA

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending a workshop with Dreamworks Animation artist Mike Hernandez. He lectured extensively on lighting and color theory. I hope some of what I've learned from his talk is manifesting in these studies. Both were done in under an hour and on site.

Be like water, my friend

Eaton Canyon Natural Area, Pasadena, CA

Two-and-a-half hours. I walked around Eaton Canyon for a half-hour until I found what I was looking for - a tree above a stream - as I wanted to take on the challenge of painting moving water and reflections. I'm still trying to understand why there's such a stark contrast between the warm part of the stream in front of me and the cooler section behind it. I know it has to do with the way the light is reaching my eye, but I can't figure it out exactly. Anyway, it looked really cool. I'll have to sit down and study Sargent and Zorn's watercolors for a better way to apply these colors - those guys are virtuosos in this medium.

Distant Storm

Eaton Canyon Natural Area, Pasadena, CA

Four hours, 6" x 9". I struggled with this one in the field, so I took a photograph of the scene as reference and tried to remedy my problems in the studio. I'm not sure if I was successful or not, but I definitely learned a lot in the process. That's more important than making pretty pictures anyhow.

Through the Forest

Eaton Canyon Natural Area, Pasadena, CA

2.5 hours, 6" x 9". As I was painting this, I kept imagining that wood sprites would pop up. Only squirrels did. What a disappointment.

Eaton Canyon

6" x 9", two hours, Eaton Canyon Natural Area. We moved to a larger size watercolor block this week, and the transition was what you would expect if you watched movies on your iPod touch all your life, and suddenly your dad wheels into the family room a shiny big 40" LCD TV.

I need bigger brushes.

Arroyo Seco Dog Park

4" x 6", two hours, Arroyo Seco Dog Park. There's a small stretch of park space along the 110 FWY that I drive by every time I head from work in Downtown to school in Pasadena which has these amazing trees that, for some reason or another, have decided to grow parallel to the ground. I spent my afternoon painting them while dogs and their owners ran circles around me. A Great Dane at one point shoved his face into mine out of curiosity. I had never seen one in person before so it was quite a treat to experience such an encounter.

It's kind of funny and serendipitous because I also got The Art of Bolt in the mail today and I was thinking it would have been so fun to work on this film. The great landscape and urban environment paintings in the book by Paul Felix, Bill Perkins and others are along the lines of what we've been doing all semester in class. Hopefully if I keep going, someday I can join a top-notch visual development team like the one who worked on that movie. I won't give up!

A Walk in the Park

4" x 6", two hours at Eaton Canyon Natural Area in Pasadena, CA.

Landscapes and Seascapes

More studies from my Gouache Landscape Painting class. All are 4" x 6" and were done with a limited palette on-site with some minor touch-ups back in the comfort of my own room. We open up to a full palette tomorrow. I can't wait.

Landscapes

I'm still alive. This quarter has kept me very busy - I've got four night and weekend classes on top of an already hectic workweek at the office. One of the courses I'm taking over at Concept Design Academy is a gouache landscape class that's being taught by Jackson Sze. The objectives of the course are to study light and develop a sense of color and design. We go out every weekend and paint small 4x6 studies en plein air (i.e. on site). The class started off doing black-and-white value studies and has now moved on to a limited palette of the three primaries plus white.

I really enjoy this class because I love to explore and be outdoors. A couple of weeks ago I found this amazing park trail just minutes from my house that offers incredible vistas of the San Bernardino mountains (the first several studies above were done there). It's funny, I've lived here all this time and had no idea this sort of treasure lay in my backyard. Makes you wonder what other kinds of secrets you might discover if you just took the time to look around...

Eaton Canyon

Two hours. 8" x 10". I need to keep reminding myself of the big three - foreground, middleground, background.

Schabarum Regional Park

Two hours. 8" x 10". Trying to get better at plein air landscapes.

Pasadena Plein Air

Various sizes, from 5" x 7" to 9" x 12". These four were all done in under 1.5 hours last weekend at a plein air workshop with Bill Perkins and company. Thanks guys, for being so friendly.

Our goal was to focus on color relationships to help establish the time of day and the atmosphere of a scene. Rendering was largely thrown out because the short time frame necessitated a focus on the big picture. In other words, since your main light source - the sun - is moving, you have to paint just as fast, if not quicker.

I mixed with a larger palette than I was used to for these exercises. I'm not accustomed to seeing so much chroma in my work.

Hahamongna Watershed Park

5" x 7"s on masonite gessoboards. I spent my Sunday over at Hahamongna Watershed Park, off the 210 near Art Center College of Design, for a plein air landscape painting workshop led by Tim Solliday. His primary focus for the class was to capture the conditions and tone of light and not necessarily dwell on the details. Thus, there was a great deal of emphasis on the fundamentals, namely - big shapes before small; warms advancing and cools receding; keeping a coherent value structure between the foreground, middle distance, and background; striving for a circular or figure-eight composition, and so on and so forth.

I whipped up the first painting in a little over a couple of hours, which is a bit embarrassing to admit, because it doesn't look like much for all that time spent. After Tim worked his magic on my sketch and passed along a few helpful pointers, I ran off to another spot while we still had light and painted a second composition - in fifteen minutes flat. I don't have a developed enough eye at the moment to tell you if it ended up being better than the first, but at least I realized I shouldn't have to take so long to reach a similar level of finish.

I'd like to do more sketches in the weeks to come; it's always a pleasure to be painting in the great outdoors.

Eaton Canyon

Three hours. 8" x 10". Back to Eaton Canyon, trying to make good on my goal to do more plein air landscapes. This was done at the same spot as yesterday's, facing counterclockwise 90 degrees instead.

Eaton Canyon

Two hours. 8" x 10". Two of my New Year's Resolutions are to get better at depicting color relationships and creating believable environments, so I'm going to do as many plein air paintings as humanly possible. This one's admittedly quite messy, but it's a start.

Here's to a productive 2009!

Period Architecture Sketches

About fifteen minutes to thirty minutes a piece. Drawn on location in Chinatown (Los Angeles) Olvera Street (Los Angeles), and Forest Lawn (Glendale). Our homework for last week was to sketch buildings which had a period feel to them, and to focus on the aspects of the architecture which gave them that distinctive atmosphere.

Watercolors

Two hours each. These paintings were done two weeks ago at a watercolor workshop hosted by Bill Perkins. I wasn't particularly used to working in such a loose and transparent fashion. There were many times I felt like I was on the edge of losing control of the piece - having to deal with water retention and the rate of evaporation are challenges I never had to struggle with when I was painting more opaquely. Absorbed an incredible amount of practical information though. Bill is a treasure trove of knowledge.