California Trip, October 2006

In October I went to California for about 2 weeks for work. At the end of that trip I spent 5 days painting in and around Monterey/Carmel/Big Sur. I should say "attempting" to paint, as most of my efforts turned out quite poorly. If you've never been to that area, it's main attraction is the spectacular coastline, which begins along the Monterey Peninsula and extends south into the region known as "Big Sur". In many places, sheer cliffs rise up hundreds of feet from the pounding ocean. There are also scattered beaches, many scenic bridges...almost too much to paint.

And therein lies the problem. Never having painted in the area before, I bit off more than I could chew. I tried to make almost every painting a masterpiece, but trying to capture the enormity of the region proved impossible. Next time I plan to paint simpler snippets - a group of rocks as opposed to the entire coastline, etc.

Anyway, here are the only 2 paintings that turned out decently.

This one is a 9x12 oil painting of the Carmelite Monastery, located along Route 1 just south of Carmel. I had seen this the previous day and thought it would make a good morning painting, with the sun catching the side of the building. I set up on the beach and worked on this for about 2 hours. Surprisingly, no one bothered me the entire time...it was wonderful! Though I don't feel I really captured the light on the building, and the trees are kind of clunky.


The second painting is called "Mountain Peak", it is a 6x8 oil. I had spent a couple of hours struggling with one of those majestic views when a fog bank suddenly blew in, obstructing my view completely. I was starting to pack my supplies when I just happened to glance inland, where I saw the top of one of the mountains glowing through breaks in the clouds. The contrast between the blue of the sky and the warm glow on the mountain was beautiful, and something I just had to try to capture. Considering how tired I was I think I did pretty well.