Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Plein Air Mondays

Now that I am a full time artist (re: no longer working at Yahoo! and working as a freelance painter and Icon Designer) I can finally, FINALLY, join my Plein Air Painting group for Monday paint-outs!!

I joined the LGAA, Los Gatos Art Association, about 2 years ago, specifically because they had regular, organized Plein Air outings. In my excitement, if I'd bothered to carefully read the fine print, I would have seen that these outings were on Mondays. Not conducive to a full-time work schedule.

Now, post Yahoo! layoff... I am free free free to finally participate. And I am loving it!

One of my favorite recent outings was a visit to the Santa Cruz harbor and the SeaCliff lighthouse:

Each visit out I am learning more about light, composition, paint application and equipment! I am still fiddling with which pochade, which turp, which gear to bring out on these Mondays. Here I was using my Guerilla Pochade, French Resistance, with a plastic palette tray. This is a my go-to set up, on a standard camera tripod. Not heavy. Not too small. Not too big.

The next week I decided to try out my half french easel.  I haven't used this easel, except in my studio as a table top easel, in a long while, so in an effort to carry less and also wanting to use my new Fine Art Tech palette, I packed up the Julian Half French.

It's still a great system. I do love the French easels!
On this Monday we met out at Coyote Lake near Morgan Hill. I used a piece of plexi-glass for my palette. I prefer a glass palette so knew I'd have to work on that later. Otherwise, the system worked pretty well. I did forget clamps to hold my turp as well as secure my garbage bag for soiled paper towels. I put that all in a note-to-self to remember for next time.

Here's my set up and my finished painting from Coyote Lake:

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

"Miss Infinite Hat"

Has it really been since December since I posted anything?

Well, I have been busy - so that is a good thing ;)

A client who commissioned a painting from me a few years back wrote me an email asking about another piece. Yeah!

I have a series of little paintings, all 6x6 and acrylic, that I made in 2008.  I was about to do my first Art Fair and wanted some new work that was all the same size and hopefully easy purchases ;)  I sold a handful that day and was pretty happy. Little did I know that one of those paintings, "Miss Infinite Hat" would be seen on my website and someone would ask me to paint it for them... larger.

So, back in October I was commissioned to recreate that painting 16x16".

Work in Progress, new piece and the original
I've been juggling my days between painting in the studio on the commission, creating icons for web and mobile for various clients, and getting outdoors to do plein air painting. In other words, I've been having a wonderful time!


And now she's finished! Always a mix of emotions at this point.  Happy with the painting, thrilled to meet my deadline, relieved the varnishing went on flawlessly, sad I don't get more time with the piece, hopeful I took at least a few great shots of her with my various cameras, anxious that FedEx will deliver her on-time and un-damaged and of course wondering if the client will love it. What a soup of emotions!


Off she goes to NY, NY!!



Finished! 'Infinite Hat' ©sara mordecai