Valerie

Here's a painting of model Valerie from last week's Art Gym open workshop at the San Diego Art Institute. She was posing for the figure, not portrait, and had to change her pose shortly after she began because of discomfort. So I ended up scrubbing my first session and had a little less than two hours to do this study. 12 x 16". Oh, and I had to set up pretty far from the model--about 20 feet away. The distance and the short time helped me stay loose, I think.

At the Presidio

The quarterly paint out for the San Diego chapter of the California Art Club met at The Presidio in Mission Hills last weekend. I haven't done a lot of architecture in my plein air studies in the past. Generally, I prefer the look of untouched nature. But the old missions around California do provide some pretty good subject matter.

I painted this by starting with a warm Burnt Sienna wash in the dark areas, and then kept the colors relatively warm throughout the painting. The morning started off very overcast, but when the sun came out, thankfully it was behind this building so everything here remained in shadow for the two and a half or three hours I was there.

9 x 12 inch gessoed panel