Saturday, February 25, 2012

Santa Clara Historic Railroad Station, February 23, 2012

This site was chosen for the opportunities available to try out some perspective challenges, along with a presentation, and a handout on basic perspective, and some "tools" to help get it all down on paper.

Another great day painting in the sunshine. We are having an early spring after a non-rain winter. Our paintsites group gathered in Santa Clara at the transit center. Morning commuter Caltrains thundered in and out, picking up and disgorging passengers traveling to and from San Francisco or the Peninsula. Buses came and went, a construction crew in hardhats worked nearby, and our artists tackled perspective. Leaders Jenny and Sylvia offered a wonderful concise lesson with handouts. I even received a nice plexiglass viewfinder for attending. This painting truly was a perspective challenge.   Mary Paquet

We had a fine day at the Santa Clara train station for the "perspective" refresher led by Jenny & Sylvia.     The venue worked particularly well as there was a range of small structures, simple to complex, on which to practice both one- or two-point perspective.      The "rules & principles" review was useful but I found the simple tools they'd made for us and then demonstrated to be even more helpful --- easy to use and very portable, I anticipate using them frequently in the future.    Brad Santos      



Jenny Tero   The yellows on the building were enhanced by the light shining through the trees at the end of the platform.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Campbell Heritage Theatre, February 16th, 2012

A beautiful crisp, clear day in bright sunshine, but we certainly needed jackets.  The reflecting pool was a huge challenge!
 
The Campbell Heritage Theater is a handsome building and really shines on a bright day.    We could only get about 20 yards from the building which presented some challenges as far as perspective.    In discussing this with Jenny & Sylvia we concluded that painting buildings like these plein air presents problems one wouldn't face painting them from a photograph -- things I hadn't considered before.    So I definitely plan to attend the Santa Clara Train Station session next week focusing on "Perspective" -- just the short discussion we had in Campbell was very useful.Brad Santos

Mary Paquet

Jenny Tero
Sylvia Waddell
Thanks for the opportunity to really see this beautiful building I've overlooked many times before.
Caroline Garbarino
  

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Overfelt Gardens Park, San Jose, February 2nd, 2012

Laurie Barna
Chris Edwards

Anne Foster

Leslie Grimm
Mary Paquet


Quince bushes at Overfelt Gardens,  Jenny Tero

Another great day to be out painting with Jenny & Sylvia and the group; a fine memorial to a great man (Confucius -- in case you didn't recognize him from my painting); and another so-so painting.    Still, two out of three isn't bad.  Brad Santos



Caroline Garbarino



Sylvia Waddell