SOMA construction plein air

San Francisco is undergoing a huge building surge all about the city, with new office towers and luxury apartments going up everywhere you look, which is what brought me out to this location at First and Mission.  I think this is going to be Salesforce Tower?

Turned out all right considering I didn't bring a pencil, which would have been nice for tightening details.  Instead, all I had was a day-glow orange Stabilo pen that I got for free last year.  It turns out to be a nice tool for the under-drawing.  Thankfully, with a bit of gray and white gouache I was able to get some harder edges.

As always, there are unexpected challenges painting on location.  In this case, the crane started moving about ten minutes after I started, before I had a chance to note exactly how the light was falling on it and before I could make out some of the detail around the claw and along the arm.  Oh well!

I also mostly resisted the urge to tweak things once I got home.  Mostly..

Squirrel!

Don't ask...

Still cold

The sun has started peeking in on us for the first time in a month (it has been uniformly gray) so I thought I'd go out and do some painting...The sun was certainly nice, but with the wind my fingers still went numb after a while.  Plus, after I roughed out the drawing, the tractor moved away so i had to kind of paint based on what i rememberd. That's what makes plein aire so exciting! Whee!!!

skull still life

Not actually a really skull - just one of them plastic models.  Complete with brain!  Although come to think of it, I'm not sure where the pieces of brain have gotten themselves to...hmmm...

St. George

A study of a statue we saw in the Grote Markt in Brussels last year.  The setting sun was hitting it just so..

Reverse engineering Anders Zorn

...or at least trying to!  I was inspired this weekend to do some master copies to see if a scintilla of his genius might rub off on me.  Ha!  Probably not, but still, it was fun and interesting. I wasn't too slavish about details/colors...

Master copies

Yet another thing I enjoy doing but don't do enough is master copies.  In this case, a copy of a piece by the amazing Nathan Fawkes.  (This link, by the way, is one of three, all of which are worth a visit).  On this one he posts mostly thumbnails...but they are the most amazing thumbnails!)  He does some really amazing work in watercolors and gouache, not to mention some jaw-dropping charcoal portraits.  They are not to be missed!  I should just take his online class one day.

In my copy, I like how the foreground turned out.  I kind of lost my way in the background.

...And here are a couple of really small but intimidating copies of Anders Zorn portraits.  I still kick myself because I missed his show when it came to the Legion of Honor last year.  It seemed everyone I spoke to, artist or not, agreed it was the most amazing thing ever.