Final day painting Avalon

The night painting was done Wednesday night after painting up on the hill overlooking the bay. I truly enjoyed the night painting here as the lights on the water and everywhere seemed to shine and glisten. This view was from the beach looking at the Busy Bee restaurant. The last day we painted a view on the other side of the Casino in the morning, and in the afternoon before packing up, I painted this view of the pier from a nice umbrella on the beach. I enjoyed painting the pier on this long paper, (6x18) as it seems to go with this scene. We had a late lunch and then after packing up, we were off to the dock to board the Catalina Express back home. A wonderful time with great artists friends, and a nice time painting, painting, and more painting. I look forward to next year. Truly inspiring.

Day two in Catalina

On the second day of our Catalina painting trip, we got up early had breakfast, and headed out to paint. We went down the walkway along the beach towards the casino, and pass the Yacht Club, I turned around and started painting the atmospheric view with the Yacht Club in the view. Shortly after I started painting, the clouds started to lift, and the blue ski started peaking through at the top of the hills. It was quite magical, and I hope I achieved it. It was now about 11 am, so we stoped by the local Vons and picked up deli sandwiches and came down to get a taxi to take us up to the vista point, overlooking Avalon, on Mt. Ada. When we got there I noticed a nice park like area, we could walk into with views of Avalon on one side and another bay on the other side. Also up in this area was a large grove of Eucalyptus trees of various types and ages. It was such a beautiful location, I had a hard time deciding what to paint. I finally settled on the view of the Casino looking through a grouping of Eucalyptus trees. When I finished, I went to check on what Terry and Joan had done, and found that Terry was finished with her lovely painting of Avalon bay, and Joan was finishing her painting. I turned around and did a quick painting of one of the trees in view from where I was standing. I do want to come back and paint this location, and we all decided it will be more beautiful even later in the afternoon. That evening we painted night scenes again.

Painting Avelon, Catalina Island

Last week my 5 of my artists friends and I traveled to Avelon, on Catalina Island, for three days of painting. We arrived about 1:30 pm, and after we checked into our hotel and had a late lunch, we all walked about to start painting. We settled on a nice location with vistas of the casino and of course all the boats in the harbor. I started to paint the view of the Casino, but found that it was not working for me. I rubbed it out, and made this quick painting of the boats not to far from our view. There was someone fishing in their small boat while their friend watched, from another little boat.

Later that evening we went out, and painted the lights of Avelon. I choose the lights on the pier. The glow from the teal green contrasted with the red from the boats was magical. We had little lights we hooked to our easles. I must say we also atraceted quite the audiance, as folks are accustomed to seeing plein air painters in Avelon, but I guess not to many paint at night. I had not done this before, but found the experience allot of fun.

Laguna Beach Morning

Yesterday on a whim, my friend and I Terry d Chacon decided to take a quick morning trip to the beach to paint at least one painting, and get back home before the afternoon traffic. Because we did not have much time, we set up on a high bank on the far end of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach. We had painted this same peninsula a few weeks ago, but from the other side in the afternoon. The weather was perfect and we quickly got busy painting. The flowers in the foreground framed the view nicely, and the weather was perfect. We finished in about 1 1/2 hours (about all the quarters we had for the parking meter), and got back in the car and headed back home. It is interesting to paint the same subject from different views. This pastel is a 6x18 painting on Wallis paper with watercolor underpainting.