Watercolor of a San Diego Trolley: Free Ride

Save for later & Share!

Free Ride 5.5 x 7 Watercolor on paper
There’s a trolley stop at the bottom of the block where my booth sits in Little Italy when I exhibit at the Artwalk in San Diego. My friend VLB snapped photos to send me as painting fodder, and I tested this one to explore the composition as a larger painting. It’s almost an abstract of squares. (If I go larger, I promise to use a ruler.) She sent me a whole bunch of these from San Diego & NYC. I’m getting my urban-mojo on this summer. 🙂

The Sierra Madre Art Fair last weekend was a little wet from a Saturday night/Sunday morning shower, but the downpour stopped as a little Mother’s Day gift, and the crowds came out to gaze at the artists’ offerings and buy some art.

My friends Karen & Glenn Winters moved their set up under the arbor in Memorial Park when the rain came Saturday night. It was chilly all weekend, but there was a great turn out for the event and everyone had good sales.

Friends & patrons Holly & Gordon Howe arrived Saturday with a bouquet of sweetpeas and white roses from their garden, and a huge plate of swoon-worthy short-bread-pecan-caramel-chocolate squares. I handed out treats all day and still had cheerful flowers and amazing sweets to bring home.

Just after the rain stopped on Sunday – ready for friends in my cozy booth.

Art Quote
I had previously been taught to paint the head in three separate stages – each one repeating – in charcoal, in thin color-wash and in paint – the same things. By Sargent’s method, the head developed by one process. Until almost at the end there were no features or accents – simply a solid shape growing out of and into a background with which it was one. When at last he did put them in, each accent was studied with an intensity that kept his brush poised in mid-air until the eye and hand had steadied to one purpose, and then…. bling!. The stroke resounded almost like a note of music. It annoyed him very much if the accents were carelessly indicated, without accurate consideration of their comparative importance. They were, in a way, the nails upon which the whole structure depended for solidity. ~J. H. Heyneman

Save for later & Share!