Botanical Garden at Camellia Time

Collage 1: Top: Peach colored vireya rhododendron; red camellia
Middle: pink camellia detail, white camellia with red stripe; magnolia detail
Bottom row: red camellia, pink camellia

The camellias in my neighborhood have been blooming, and I finally got out to the San Francisco Botanical Garden (formerly known as the Arboretum, which it still also is!) to appreciate them.  While I was there, I was able to appreciate other plants as well!

Collage 2: Top: Agave (probably), red camellia, magnolia (tulip style)
Center: white camellia
Bottom: pink furry protea, euphorbia, two enormous tulips in pale and medium pink

Collage 3: Top: white rhododendron with hot pink markings, white camellia

Bottom: pink magnolia, yellow center detail of a protea shrub, pink spray of holly

Sky (4 March 2025)

Clouds: I can't get enough of them, when they are distributed in interesting ways... 

You know I love giant echium (28 February 2025)

These remind me of walks I would take with friends along the bay shore at a prior employer...  Good friends, good colleagues, good conversations...  Also: walking meetings are GREAT. 

Silent pigeon (25 February 2025)

I don't know which artist creates these stencils, but I like them! 

Plum blossoms (25 February 2025)

The plum trees in Alameda are having their moment. 

Ceanothus (25 February 2025)

What a pleasant shade of blue...
 

Lost bud (23 February 2025)

My orchids want to give blooming another go...

 

Brunch in sunshine (22 February 2025)

Every so often, it's nice to get out and be a fancy city person with friends! (At La Mar...)

Brick and cage (again)(22 February 2025)

I'm assuming the cage is to prevent parkour challenges, but I can't be sure. 

Camellia time

 

Recent Skies

"You take a lot of photos of skies."  "Yes, and I have NO REGRETS." 

Late Night, February

One of my gal friends is able to stay up dancing into the early hours of morning, and so we did! And then we bragged about it to all of our friends who had gone to bed four hours before we left the club...

Late Plum of Early Spring

The plums with purple leaves are supposed to bloom after those with pale green leaves, but SOMEONE didn't get the memo. 

Gold and gray

So lovely, and an upcoming challenge to paint in oil pastels…

Oil Pastel Color & Handling Studies

I am out of practice in both drawing and painting, and I've only used oil pastels a few times previously, but realize trying to learn how to use these is lots of fun!

Frustrating, but also fun.  (Thank goodness my first dusk attempt (a week ago) worked out well: it gave me the encouragement I needed to try again.)

The gray paper, the way the pastels blend, the way I touched my forehead and then was alarmed at the large purple (oil pastel) mark in the mirror - it's all an adventure.

Abstracts are the most fun, because I KNOW those are just play (serious play, but still).  So perhaps jumping straight into sunsets and trying to figure out how to use shades of orange (a color I haven't used much in any medium) was ambitious...  But I'm learning things, trying these first skies.  (I rarely even painted skies in watercolor!)

I'm happy that I am taking (making) time to TRY.

Lemony protea

If it were any more pale yellow, it would taste like lemon sorbet.
 

Friday Sunset Studies

My phone is FILLED with these, and now that I'm trying to learn to paint the reflections of the warmest colors, my phone will surely overflow... 

Color Studies with oil pastels, continued

I think that the kind of sunsets I want to draw aren't as blue as I think they are, and I need to come at them with very different colors (more beiges than blues)...  but I made one with exagerrated blues, and it was educational.  It's hard to get orange reflections to sit on top of the blues - they blend into other colors.

Also shown here: the set as I use them; studies in artificial cereal colors, blues, and greens. 

I think I need a lot more days off to get the hang of these...  But it is delightful to LEARN by trying.

Color studies with oil pastels from Japan

I LOVE LOVE LOVE my new oil pastels!

I previously posted that one of my October 2024 adventures in Tokyo was going to the home studio and shop Kawachi Art Supplies, trying the handmade oil pastels they are known for on kraft paper on the patio to confirm they truly are as buttery and lipstick-soft as I'd read (they are!), and then buying a gorgeous, balanced set of ONE HUNDRED of them, because the colors are so amazingly lovely.

Back in November, I finally started to put them onto paper, and decide how I would draw/paint with them.  They are so much softer and blend so much more easily than other oil pastels I've tried, that it really did require some play-testing to choose how to use them.  I'm trying to take up 'softer' ways of painting, unlike the precision of my architectural drafting back in the day, or even some of my watercolors with extensive under-drawings.  And these seem ideal for this softer approach.

So, here's my first representational (non-abstract) color study, using an evening dusk phone photo I took back on Election Day 2024 as the color source.  I zoomed in and made some compositional changes for the study.  All of the colors I used are over on the right.  I made the bay a little darker than it really was, as I work on how to manage reflected light on such a dark base.

One: OH MY GOSH, these are a delight to draw with.  I use my fingers to blend the colors.  I'm learning about how they do or don't blend, and how to layer them.

Two: I am very much out of practice for painting, so I am relieved this turned out well, and that I learned from it.  I'm eager to draw/paint more!

Three: I got to the colors I want from blending, but also want to return to the shop to buy more shades of purple: I have many sunsets I want to paint, some with nearly neon violets within them, and those will be brighter and cleaner if I don't over-blend them.  So yes, I'm making up excuses to buy even more colors.  Yes, I know the owner makes some rather fluorescent violets, and I hadn't thought I'd use those, but I'm inventing new use cases!

I hope this is something that I can do more often - that I will make time for - among my other pleasant creative habits.

 

Camellia time

The camellia that survived the renovation work (and somehow escaped having lumber piled onto it) is glowing radiantly right now.