Drawing in France: Jun 9-20. Post #2 Enjoying the Sites and towns.

Dan Egan, our cyclist, posed for us one day.  20 minutes. Dan would be up at 6am and take off biking for the day while we painted.  He usually went 40-80 miles a day, depending on the weather and the map planned out for the day.

Sketching Wednesday evenings partial eclipse, a little Fucia flower and a quickie of an old bunker turned public bathroom  on Il De Re.

The Ruins of an old 7th century Abby!  I should have done more drawing here, it was really interesting.

A Donkey found in a small field and a whale Vertebrae seen in an artists window.     

On the island of Il De Re they used to harvest sea salt with the help of Donkeys.  These Donkeys, specialized to this Island, are very Hairy, growing shaggy and long haired much like some dogs.  It's not the same as sheep or Llamas, but close.  Very interesting to see.  They no longer use them for salt gathering but many still exist on the Island.

More of the Donkeys.  they were cute.

We settled into Paint for a while in the afternoon and I did this drawing while figuring out what to paint.

I just liked this cool digging machine. They were either quarrying up some gravel or reinforcing the sea wall with these.

A quick sketch of my Sun flower painting.

Lone Sunflower, against a building, in Il De Re.

Drawing in France! June 9-20. Post #1. Getting started.

This June I attended a painting retreat to France!  I joined my friends Joel Yau and Spencer Snyder on this trip, hosted and organized by Dan Cooney. (http://dcooneypaints.jimdo.com/news/) There were 5 of us artists and one cyclist.  We began our trip in Paris, took the train to La Rochelle for another night, then drove out to our final destination, Le Vieux Monestare, in St. Hilare de Ville Franche. (http://www.levieuxmonastere.com/) There we painted the French farmlands and visited nearby cities of Congac, Saintes, La Rochelle and the island of lle de Re.

Waiting for our flight to Paris, June 9th. Spence and I were on the same flight.  Everyone it seemed, was having troubles getting to France. Joel missed one of his connections and had to get a different flight in order to make it there on Saturday.  

More waiting...our flight was delayed about 5 hours by a sea bird that was  sucked into an engine when our plane landed from it's previous flight from Paris.

Finally!  On the plane and headed for Paris.  In flight I watched a couple of films, my favorite was a murder mystery called "Poupoupidou".

Once in Paris Spence and I found our Hotel, with Joel waiting.  After settling in we sent out for dinner at a place called "Cafe Rendezvous". Friday, June 10.

Saturday, June11. La Rochelle.  We joined out host at this Mother in-laws house in La Rochelle, for our send off dinner!  

Sunday, June 12.  On our way to the Vieux Monestare!  Tierry, Dan's brother in law, helped drive us in a second car.  

My first drawing from the Monestary. This view is looking directly West.

My second Drawing.  This view looks directly South.  We had a large deck with  a grand, full view of the southern vista!
Drawn with my Niki fountain pen and Noodler's Polar Brown ink.  

A drawing of one corner of the Monestary's building.  Spence and I both thought  that there were many interesting com-positional opportunities in the compound.  This was looking at the roof of the gaming shed, seen from the pool deck.
Pelican fountain pen and Noodler's Black.  

Pencil sketch of the view West.  

A quickie sketch of our living area at the Monestare.  We stayed in their "Renoir" suit.  It's the largest unit in their compound, with bedrooms on the second floor and a large lining room and kitchen on the ground floor.  We had plenty of room to spread out our work for viewing and critiques.

The Church that resides right next to the Monestary.  This is a private, family owned Church, that despite it's  intimate location to the Monestary, had no relation to it.  

Sketches in Congac.

My last sketch near the Monestary, done before attempting my last watercolor paintings.  I wanted to catch the Sunrise, but it dissappeared into these clouds!

Drawing at triple Rock Brew pub Fri June 3

Hanging out  Post Kroeber, with Margo, Johnathan and Tim.  We were mostly talking about my upcoming trip to France, Margo's travails with her children and how great all the beers were that night.  Managed to get this two page spread in though, despite many of our subjects catching on to us! I guess we have been coming here a little too much this year, they are catching up to our show.

New Figures, new Ink, new style.

April 29th 2011.  Drawing at Kroeber Hall.  Dean discovered a fantastic sketching ink, called Noodler's Ink.  I am now totally addicted to this ink!  It flows beautifully and does not clog my fountain pens.  Now I am also experimenting with a new style, kind of a Mike Mignola ripoff, I know, but I am loving it.  The blacks are so lush and yummy.

My second experiment with the "Mignola" style.

Talia.  Drawn May 6th @ Kroeber Hall.

More Talia, more blacks, more yummy.

A little Frank Miller sneaked into this one.

Sarah.  Drawn @ Kroeber Hall, Friday June 3rd.

Trappist May 26 2011

My Entry in my smaller Moleskin sketchbook.

Sketching the Trappist, on a busy Thursday evening, with Jason and Lee,
Lin fischer and Merav. Dean had just left for Seattle and was probably drawing in Portland at that moment.  I will post his drawings when I get the scans.  

Death Valley: Thursday-Friday, March 24-25, 2011.

The Dunes.
On Day 2 we went to the Dunes.  I hoped and planned on doing a bunch of watercolors at the dunes, unfortunately, I did not really think ahead!  Sand and wind were my enemy, and they were at their most sandy and windy.

I did find that drawing at the dunes was OK, but I was having pen troubles.  I ran out of Noodler's ink, an ink introduced to me by Dean Gustafson, and my fountain pen did not like to go back to my old ink.

Here is my first Watercolor of the day, and the most successful.  The wind and sand held off for most of the time I was painting this one, but slowly crept up on me.  My colors started to seem really granulated!  I thought that perhaps my paints were old, but it was sand!  Very quickly after that my pallet began to fill with sand and I had to stop and clean it out.

2nd and last watercolor of the day.  It got really comic! My pallet was full of sand, and the sand was sticking to all the wet areas of the painting!  The cool thing, actually, was that when the painting was dry and I wiped off all the sand particles  an interesting effect was left behind, so maybe it was not so bad after all!  If I ever get to try this again I'll just have to figure out how to protect the pallet.  

Dunes.

Dunes simplified.

I really loved trying to get the flow of the Dunes, even if I did not quite succeed.

Some Pencil attempts...
Another thing I failed to take into account was the time of day.  We were at the Dunes in the middle of the day, from noon to about 3:30, so there were not many shadows.  The Dunes were very bright when the sun was out and flat when the cloud cover arrived.  Early morning and late evening are the best times to see the Dunes.  I'll know better next time.

Non photo blue pencil...

Friday, Day 3.  This small range of mountain shapes was to be found opposite the entrance to the Hole in the Wall wash where we were camped.  I was pretty obsessed with wanting to draw and paint this particular part of that range.  It's the front part of what is called 20 Mule Team Canyon.

The same mountain again, in watercolor.

My second attempt, a little smaller.  I think this came out better.  I should have kept going with the watercolors, instead I moved on to Zabriski Point to try an Oil.

My last drawing of the trip.  At Zabriski Point.  The shadows were very deep and lovely at this time of day but I chose to ignore them in favor of just capturing the lines of the hills.  I took lots of photos, so perhaps I'll do some work from those later on.

Drawing in Death Valley.

Death Valley: Day 1. Wednesday March 23rd.

Zabriski Point.
My first drawing at Zabriski Point, looking up the walkway and out over the northern uplifting ridges.

Zabriski PointWow, what a view.  I was sitting down below the large overlooking view area, almost out of sight of most of the other tourists.  I could overhear people talking to one another in a variety of foreign languages, mostly German and Japanese, some French.   

Zabriski Point.
The view is just breathtaking.  Drawing it was both maddening and really, really fun!

Painters Pallet
This is a hasty sketch of a small part of the area called "painters Pallet".  This is part of a one way drive through a portion of the main valley. It features some wide vistas and narrow washes.  Amazing!

Painters Pallet
I loved the view of this dramatic wash, also in Painters Pallet.  I wanted to return to this site to paint but did not have time.

Hole in the Wall Wash.
Our Campsite, from under our shade/rain structure. We camped near the end of the Hole in the Wall Wash, a rough and tumble, undeveloped camping area!

Dante's View
This was my first drawing at Death Valley.  Done at one of the highest viewing points, Dante's View.  Wow!  You can see almost the entire valley.  At some points your view can cause some serious vertigo!

Dante's View
Trying to draw a vista this large is humbling, but super fun!

Dante's View
For this drawing I hiked down the path, off the main viewing area.  It kept going, so I did too, until I could get a better view, almost straight down the valley.  It was downhill, so it was pretty easy, not so, climbing out!

Badwater
This drawing was done at the very bottom of the same valley sketched above.

Painters Pallet.
This is just the beginning of Painters Pallet.  I really wanted to do some watercolors here, but sadly, I was not able to get back.  The visit was much too short.  So, I'll just have to go back!  My thoughts before the trip were that I would mostly do watercolors while in the park, instead I ended up doing a lot more drawing, which was a revelation in itself.  I really enjoyed doing these drawings.  I was using my Namiki fountain pen with Noodler's Ink on this first day.