Verdant Morning

 

Verdant Morning 9 x 12 watercolor on paper .

I still love to paint the  greenest California Hills in Spring.

Hollister Peak Morning, Hollister Peak Afternoon, Port San Luis , Plein Air watercolors from San Luis Obispo

Hollister Peak Morning 14 x 21

Hollister Peak Afternoon 14 x 21

Port San Luis  10 x 16

After a few tries, I was able to paint Hollister Peak in San Luis Obispo. The peak is so close to the coast that it is frequently covered with fog.

This was a good chance to look at the effects of morning vs afternoon light on the same subject. The peak was famously painted by William Wendt as " Where Natures God hath Wrought ". I am happy to have my own versions of this subject.

The afternoon version of this was a challenge, I usually paint in the morning. The colors were cooler and closer together in value in the afternoon.

 Port San Luis was a wonderful place to pull over with the beach next to me and the ridge in front of me.
I was directly across from the entrance to another Diablo, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.

Article on French Blog/masmoulin

Here's something I love about the blogosphere. A painter in France named Pierre de Broucker has kindly, in french, published an article about my California Plein Air paintings. The french artists ,of course, being the ones who invented plein air painting. His blog is very good and he discusses a lot of color theory from what I can understand from my 30 year old high school french. Any one who would care to translate is welcome! A link to his blog entry with illustrations is here:
http://masmoulin.blog.lemonde.fr/