December in the Desert

Every year just before Christmas, I travel from Los Angeles to the Mojave Desert...Joshua Tree National Park and the desert town of Twentynine Palms.  I love Los Angeles, but--I really look forward to these trips--a few hours and a world away from the city!


The trip always begins with passenger sketching!

First night in the desert, watching the sun go behind the hills overlooking the outskirts of Twentynine Palms...

Visiting Noah Purifoy's Desert Art Museum in the town of Joshua Tree...a wonderful collection of sculpture I hope to revisit for more sketching!  More about Noah Purifoy...

Sketching in Joshua Tree National Park...at Keys View with Palm Springs in the far distance...and Mt. San Jacinto...

Split Rock, drawn with pencil and watercolor graphite...

I never get tired of visiting Hidden Valley...called a "transition zone" for the range of plants there that grow in higher elevations.  Always some climbers and other visitors here...

Breakfast at Andrea's, a neighborhood place in Twentynine Palms with regulars who sit together and discuss all the news of the day...

Light on tamarisk trees...












And evenings in the desert...

 Driving in Joshua Tree National Park...

Leaving the Park...







...and heading home to Los Angeles with a storm coming...

 ...passing Morongo Casino, and back to the city...

A trip to the LA Zoo...

Every fall I plan an LA Zoo sketching trip with my students.  I go and do some sketching in advance...there's always apt to be some newborns to check out and I map a route.  Here are some sketches from the most recent trip...

Sketching materials at the zoo need to be easy and portable...I used a combination here of pencil, ink and ink wash in brush pens (and some watercolor on the large giraffe drawing below...)

In the Red Ape Forest...

Orangutans and Gorillas...

The the daily "elephant training" is a great opportunity to get a close up view of the elephants, today it was Billy...he seems to enjoy the grooming and feeding with his trainers, and doesn't seem to mind all the visitors...

A young orangutan...


The giraffes with a 3 week old baby!

A slow-moving tortoise gives us plenty of time to sketch....and a languorous jaguar draped in a tree...








Meerkats never stop moving and checking the skies for flying predators...

A howler monkey family and a giant otter in the newest part of the zoo, Rainforest of the Americas...

Color at the Arboretum

The beginning of a new year, and it's about time I updated here!

First, I'll share some work that follows up on my studies of Notan (harmony of light and dark) that I shared here after my Urban Sketchers Singapore workshop...time to work on color!

I did a workshop in November called the Harmony of Color at the Los Angeles Arboretum.  I believe that strong color work really needs a solid understanding of values, and I've noticed that sketchers often struggle with this when working with color.  It's so easy to get caught up in "local color", and miss the rich range of values that you're seeing.  So, I began with monochromatic studies...















I think the best place to start with color is with seeing "color temperature", so I did some studies in complementary warm and cool colors...

I started by painting the cool shadows of the Queen Anne Cottage and surrounding foliage with ultramarine blue watercolor...

Next, I used pyrrol orange (very  brilliant reddish orange!) as the complement to blue.  I wanted the cool blue to predominate, so I tried to be selective with the orange.  Just as in Notan painting, I try to be mindful of the pattern I'm creating as I work...

Then, I thought I'd experiment to see what would happen if I started with the warm color, pyrrol orange, and then added the complement of blue...I frankly found that confusing, and here the warm and cool are battling it out for dominance!  I added yellow to make a sort of triad (3 colors that are equidistant on the color wheel).  So, even if it's not completely successful, it's something to learn from!

My next step was to experiment some more with triads...and made some variations on the primaries.  While I was added I did some other complementary combinations, like violet/yellow.  There are endless possible variations, and I have more experimenting to do!

My next triad study started with painting shadows in cobalt blue...

Then adding layers of hansa yellow light and pyrrol orange--fun to see the range of greens emerge...

Some more color studies at the Arboretum...starting with some quick thumbnails...

And some larger color studies...

Cafe Sketching...

...the perfect thing to do on hot summer days around Los Angeles!
From August and September...


Quick sketching with ink and watercolor on a Saturday morning at a bakery in La Canada, in the hills above Los Angeles...the bicyclists have already had their ride and the shoppers are just getting started...

...afternoon coffee at Lamill, an elegant little bistro in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles...

More leisurely sketching with pencil, watercolor and gouache on tan paper...Blue Bottle Coffee had just opened, but was already attracting a crowd in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park...

A morning sketch over breakfast at the Highland Cafe in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park.  The lady on the phone stopped briefly in front of me as I sketched...

...and back at Lamill, this time enjoying the street-side view of Silver Lake...the business of the week is discussed on a Saturday afternoon...