Plumbago

About three years ago, I planted a single one-gallon plumbago plant in my front flower bed with my white roses, to fill in the spot where my elderly lavender plant had given up the ghost. The plumbago didn't die...but it didn't grow. It just sat there, quietly, in stasis. I watered it, I stared at it, I wondered what was the problem. A neighbor two blocks down has a glorious six-foot-high hedge of plumbago surrounding his yard, so I knew it wasn't that the climate didn't work for it. I let it be, and forgot to worry about it.

This winter, we had record rains in California. A few weeks of nothing but rain, followed by substantial incidences of once- or twice-a-week downpours. A couple of weeks ago, after all the rain had subsided and I decided I had to start watering things again, I went out and really looked at my front flower bed, and was amazed. The plumbago had tripled its size and, even more exciting, was blooming like crazy.

Today I cut a few stalks of the plumbago flowers and a couple of white roses, put them into a clear glass vase, and took them out to the patio to capture in watercolor. My intent was to do a wet-in-wet flower picture like those so many of my "idols" do so beautifully and seemingly so easily. So I taped off the margins, wet down the paper, and began.

The paper was way too wet to start, so instead of defined blossoms for the plumbago, I got vague purple "blooms" (pun intended). So I left that area, and painted around my two white roses at the top with some background color, which was more successful. The third rose, below, didn't come off quite as well, but at least I saved the whites. Then I moved to painting the plumbago flowers.

Two hours later, I had fiddled with this thing to the point of frustration and exhaustion. All the blue-purple color turned to the same tone as it dried (and I failed to mix the proper blue anyway!), so I went back in with darks. Then the white paper in between seemed wrong, so I went in with lime green. Then it seemed to need more darks, so I put some of those in, but not in a very logical way. I went back to the bloomy part at the top and painted some defined blossoms over the top. I messed with the water and vase and couldn't get it to look remotely like reflections on water. Finally, I decided to stop. It's either not finished, overdone, or ready to toss. But for the sake of those two white roses at the top (which weren't even the primary focus of my intentions for this piece), I kept it and am posting it! AAAAAHHHHH!

DAY 29: PLUMBAGO (& ROSES)

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019

On 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, with Paul Jackson paints...

Seaside

I saw Rae's post on Facebook today, with some great photos of the beach, and she commented that it was good when visiting friends "forced" her to go there, because she took it so for granted that she could go any time that she never actually goes. I think all of us in Los Angeles are spoiled like that, and think gloatingly about how we can get to the beach, the mountains, or the desert in a very short period of time, without actually ever getting in the car and doing it.

Why not? Oh, part of it is standard lethargy, I'm sure, and the rest of it is purely traffic-related. With no congestion on a Sunday morning, I can make it to Santa Monica or Venice Beach from my house in the Valley in about 20 minutes (yeah, I drive fast), which is only right, because it's only about 15 miles. But around 3:00, when we all suddenly realize we've had enough sun for the day and start thinking about barbecuing in the back yard as the sun goes down, that freeway trip can take an hour, and a lot longer if anything untoward happens (a fender-bender, a blow-out, or something worse), which it almost always does, the odds of millions of people having a perfect trip being pretty low. And there's nothing that ruins a great day at the beach more than sitting, sweaty, sandy, and pissed off, in a hot car for an hour. So, we put it off to another day, another weekend, next month, and before you know it, another summer has passed with no trips to the beach.

Of course those of us who paint can take that trip by recreating it on paper. Not really—there's no lovely exchange of ions from sitting in the charged sea breeze—but being "in the zone" while you are intent on painting is an escape in its own way. I started this painting at 5:30, and when I finally put the last stroke of crimson on that pavilion roof, I was amazed to see that it's already almost 7:30 and my cat is sitting outside my window nagging me to come and feed her!

DAY 28: PIER KIDS

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In the sketchbook...

Sequim sights

For a while now, I've been following a Facebook page (called "Sequim Outdoors") generated by people (mostly awesomely talented photographers) who live in Sequim, Washington and who portray the delights of nature, from birds and wild animals to forest paths and streams to ancient barns and lavender farms. The latter are why I originally started following, because I was intrigued by Sequim's claim to be the lavender capitol of North America. It's in Washington State—how can lavender thrive there, when everyone knows a dry, warm climate like Provence is the ideal place to grow lavender? Well, apparently even in rainy Washington there are microclimates that fool you, and Sequim's is one of them. They have a big week-long lavender festival every July just to prove it.

I love pictures of old farms and old barns, and Sequim and the surrounding towns have their share. I decided to try painting one of them today; I wish, in retrospect, that I had used my big watercolor paper, because at the size I worked in my sketchbook, I could only fit most of the barn and little of the surrounding scene. But I did get to play with how to convey the feeling of the ancient wood, and perhaps this will be a test run for a larger painting.

Since I'm not drawing first this month, I decided that the only way to capture the texture of this wooden structure was to almost literally paint every single board separately. I could see the divisions or seams between sections of the barn (loft doors, main door, side door), so I sectioned it out and simply made strokes in the right proportions for each section and then connected them all afterwards. It mostly worked, although the peak of the barn is much more shallow than the one in the photograph—I didn't go extreme enough. But it still achieved my objective, which was to come up with a way to paint it that felt accurate to its construction. I particularly enjoyed the variation in the weathering of the wood.

Thanks to photographer Paul Sanders for the inspirational photograph!

DAY 27: SEQUIM BARN

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In the sketchbook...

Kayaks

So...I tried something tonight, and it didn't work at all, and it didn't work because I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO IT. With a picture like this, do you put in a wet-in-wet wash for the background, let it all dry, and paint the other stuff over the top? Do you do the figures first, and then wash behind them? I did the latter, but didn't let things dry enough before coming back, and everything got smeared and messy and imprecise. So I waited for everything to dry, took my "secret weapon" brush that I got from Paul Jackson (it's a smooth, flexible, flat-edged, two-inch-wide brush), put some diluted Cobalt blue and water on it, and went over the whole thing. It didn't make it worse...but it didn't make it much better either. It smoothed out some of the splotchy background, but the figures became duller and softer and didn't pop like they did in the reference photo.

I need someone who does this kind of thing—Sarah Yeoman?—to give me a lesson!

DAY 26: KAYAKS

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019

On 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper using Paul Jackson paints...

Beloved

Nobody loves her dogs more than Susan Sabo, and nobody takes better photographs of dogs, with or without their humans. (She's a professional.) I have saved a few over the years that particularly touched me, and today I decided to try to paint from one.

This was pretty far outside of my capabilities, particularly this month, because I've sworn not to do any drawing first. So this picture started out with me doing a wet background around the outside of the two figures, trying for just their outlines, and then going back and putting in the details. That's more challenging than you think!

I surprisingly captured Susan's shape pretty easily, while Jack's supposedly simpler form eluded me—the body was too bulky, the nose way too long...I ended up having to go back in to lift and reconfigure several areas, and I even broke out the Chinese White in the end, something I have done on literally five paintings in my entire tenure as a watercolorist. (We pride ourselves on saving the whites by leaving blank paper where they go, and some watercolorists have nothing but disdain for people who use white paint. I've never criticized anyone else, but I've always tried to do without it in my own paintings.)

Anyway, perhaps I will try this one again sometime when I can pre-draw and get the proportions right, but here is today's painting, for better or worse.

DAY 25: THE BELOVEDS

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019

On 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper using Paul Jackson paints...

East coast flowers

My friend Triste will recognize this from one of the atmospheric shots she takes of the beautiful flowers she grows in her garden. (At least, I hope she will!) I have saved a few of these, because some of the flower that grow there are almost impossible to get to thrive in California, and also because Triste does such a great job of putting them together in seemingly artless, beautiful bouquets.

This could have gone better—it probably should have been painted wet-in-wet on watercolor paper, but there were so many details and so many colors that I knew in the end I would turn it into a big puddle of gray. So I mostly painted wet on dry, and then went back in and messed with some things to get some wetter-looking effects. This worked better in some areas than others. It also probably needs a few more darks, but I'm tired and I'm quitting!

I'm quite happy with a few small points, but not thrilled with the total picture. But I did learn some things, so....

DAY 24: TRISTE'S BOUQUET

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In the sketchbook...

Just for fun

Every once in a while, someone on one of the art sites I frequent posts a photograph and says Hey, people, draw or paint this! Janice, who is doing the #30x30DirectWatercolor2019 along with me, had a beautiful harvest of radishes, so she put up the picture and four or five people did versions. Since I was wanting one painting to be up to date on my dailies, I decided I'd do one too. It was fun! Haven't done any vegetables for a while, but they're always entertaining. Nice not to have to think about being thematic, but just look and paint!

DAY 23: RADISHES

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In the sketchbook....

A different idea

I wasn't real happy with my illustration of the flower shop that features in the book I'm going to review, so I decided to try something a little more minimalist, that would represent the image in the book without trying to duplicate it exactly. So here are my buckets of flowers on the sidewalk in front of the florist, but instead of doing an entire building and filling up the page, I just put in the pink door, as a symbolic indication of what the florist's shop looks like. Is it weird? Maybe. But I think I still like it better than the one from the day before.

DAY 22: FLORIST

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In the sketchbook...

I'm a day behind (I was busy grading grad students yesterday and didn't take time to paint), so I plan to paint another one later on today.