Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows, blow up from plein air August piece (8×10)
OH what a place to be, especially in August….those fleeting days, the deep snowpack much of the year, the best place I’VE ever painted.
16x20 oil
Yosemite, Plein Air workshop Day 8/12-8/15
14x18" oils on panel, in studio
Brief Summer Moment
Blue violet light does exist in such shadows.
So, Gen & I up early, on the road at exactly 8, headed back west about 22 minutes, dropped down below Touron’s vista, only to find that we’d BOTH lost our tripod/pochade box connections. She managed to borrow one, I sat on the granite, red ants & all, peering around trees for this composition on clear values, doing it the way I saw it the way I wanted to do it. Lots of warm cobalt blues in the shadows up there, again agreeing with Richard Schmidt that the high Sierras break the rules, warm shadows, cool light….should’ve taken a picture of white paper in the shadows that showed that warm blue glow, frickin’ AMAZING!
I COULD add that high altitude symptoms I got included insomnia, except for the one night I slept through the bear that got clueless or exhausted artist’s chocolate under gear & her hubbie’s travails at AM, bah hah….headaches, but the joy, the sheer fabulous plein air fodder, kept me going!
See CHARLES WALDMAN, instructor, DEMO, images n’ such, below, somehow got pushed below early works….
Manchester State Beach Plein Air Labor Day morning
I got to be alone at the edge of the pristine estuary area, rabbits, deer, blue herons, swallows, my only company, and did this 9 x 12 panel.
August 3rd Monday Morning painters at Sonoma State
Monday Morning Painters on SSU campus
The day started foggy, which was lovely on the duck pond, silk trees so figurative, reaching for the water, eastern light diffused from a multitude of other trees began to come thru as the dang sun insisted on coming out and complicating things.
11 x 14″ Oils on Canvas
$150 unframed
Painting from early this year-Produce and nursery
- Late Winter
This is where we buy our produce, always want to paint there, here in the neighborhood. Circa 1886, Santa Rosa, Ca landmark, family trying to hold on to the land amongst urban sprawl. 11 x 14″ oils on panel, available for $225.
Yosemite-leaving Tuolumne Meadows August 11, 2008
Too realistic? Trees below lake too dark?
Ah, so to drive 6 hours home after this, but I felt compelled to do another painting. Olmstead Point, across the road, up the dome, looking at Tenaya Lake, another re-visit….and this one went as quick and nice as yesterdays of T Meadow. Observing the distant and more distant granite peaks, their darks and lights, their relationship to each other in size and color; I adjusted the shape of the lake and such, to be less awkward, as is the artist’s priviledge, not so the photographer, (HAH)! I love the grays, warms n’ cools, of the granite….that the lake is the only saturate color in view.
I’ll always remember scrambling up the dome, and having forgot the brushes AND pallete knives, scrambling up n’ back for them….a bit of shade under a stunted pine….sunscreen hurridly applied, skipping umbrella set-up….I’m sure I look like a manic, freaky character….Oh well, I like this one, and it too seems to beg a bigger canvas….11 x 14″ maybe to 24 x 30? Thank you Chuck Waldman, I think I gained some more gentle words and feelings to enable me to hit the roads and create more simply, better compositions and with heart….oh yeah…..OH,here’s a PHOTO of Tenaya viewpoint, see how I edited it, though less than usual for me….
Photo taken from dome across from Olmstead point
MarcySilveira 