Christmas 2014!

This is my third Christmas blog post!  With a few nostalgic "found" photos, I'm sending my best wishes to you all at Christmas!

L.A. RIVER

I received an email from a new-to-me paint-out group.  They were meeting at the L.A. River, officially the Los Angeles River.  An exciting location!  The rivers flows almost 50 miles through Los Angeles County.  It's in the news frequently for one reason or another.  It has been featured in many movies, but it also suffers from pollution and urban runoff.  There is a revitalization project which has been active for several years so the river is becoming beautifully restored.

It was a sunny day for our paint-out and the view from the meeting spot was wonderful.  To the south is the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge, completed in 1929, which spans the river and a freeway.  I personally like electrical transmission towers and there were a lot of those together with lush vegetation and stunning egrets and herons.

I wanted to paint the landmark bridge from a little closer but there weren't any fellow painters walking south that far so I stayed with the group.  I haven't painted a complicated bridge before but I had fun with this piece.  I also tried a gouache looking directly across the river.

Since 2012, with the remodeling of Disney California Adventure Park, there is now a small-scale replica of the Hyperion Bridge which the Disneyland Monorail travels across.  I'll add a photo from a recent visit.

8x10" watercolor

5x7" gouache

Disney's California Adventure Park

Space!

On one of my early plein air paint-outs with the group we met at Griffith Observatory (opened in 1935) in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, CA.  We meet early in the day and the Observatory doesn't open until noon so I thought we would be about the only people there.  Wrong!  Besides lots of hikers, dog walkers, deliveries, and the school busses of kids, there were several television news crews doing live reports.  It turned out to be the height of the March solar storms.  Since they can disrupt technology on Earth, the news crews were there to report on possible power and GPS outages, and airline flight rerouting.

I stayed out of the reporters' way and set up where there was a nice view to try for my watercolor.  I'm posting my painting (9"x12" with a narrow border), and a photo of my view.  I also got a nice shot of a fellow painter just finishing up her oil of the hillside and rooftops.  And I'm thrilled about the last photo treat which you'll have to read about below!

I'm so happy Aaron Kiely gave me permission to post his photo here!  It is by far my favorite of the hundreds of shots I saw of the space shuttle Endeavour's final flight over Los Angeles landmarks on September 21, 2012.  What a gorgeous and dramatic photo of the planes!  The sharp Observatory in the foreground with the crowds, and hazy downtown Los Angeles in the distance...Love it.
Thank you Aaron!

When Blog Posts Meet

After my last post, "Artists and Photos" about the Paint My Photo (PMP) website, I planned to follow up with a figure/portrait I painted from a photo on the site by Franklin.  It was a photo of a clarinetist street musician and inspired my first watercolor of a figure.  I had recently seen the Watercolor West 2011 show in which there were some wonderful figure paintings and portraits.  I wanted to try one and am posting my clarinetist here.  I made it pretty colorful which I thought fit the subject.    Meanwhile.....

Meanwhile, my friend Terry Freemark added a comment on my previous post of the "found" vacationing ladies photos in "Summer Trips~" asking if I might paint them!  This was a surprise to me since it hadn't entered my mind.  Terry has painted many watercolor portraits from black & white photos and hers are really wonderful.  Hmmm.  What occurred to me was possibly painting some of the "found" photobooth snapshots I've come across over the years.  I've added some good ones below.  They are very small, 1.5" x 2", kind of hard to see detail.  I probably couldn't improve on the look of these.  So cool.

Summer trips~

It has been so hot here this past week that I wish I could have a nice get-away to some cool vacation spot.  The heat wave has reminded me of these two vintage snapshots of ladies taking summer trips.  Two are all set to visit the island of Catalina.  But the other two are off to the California desert.  Hmmm.  Maybe it was a cooler summer that year.

Christmas in July

I love photos and I always have my small camera with me.  All those glimpses of a view, or passing moment, vignettes I happen to see, I want to capture.  I'm not a photographer, I just love snapshots.  Nowadays I like to take photos with possible paintings in mind.
I've had a page on Flickr with some of my photos for a few years.  I really enjoy adding to it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51786707@N07/
I also have fun looking for vintage images that catch my eye.  For many years I've looked through piles of old snapshots at the flea market and ephemera shows.  Some jump out as instant favorites.  It might be the subject matter or the lighting and values.  Here are two that I ran across at the local flea market this month...Christmas in July.  All this month I've noticed retailers advertising Christmas in July specials.  I love the lighting and tones on these, and what fun to find them together.