The core of me is art. I want to be an artist – a good artist. The mission of this trip is to paint en plain air on a regular basis, daily if possible. It took three weeks for me to reach the point where I could sit in front of my landscape subject and draw and paint. In getting here, I was met with logistical challenges, mental and physical challenges.
For the first en plain air location I chose a desolate location with complex topography and simple colors. Desolate because I fear people looking over my shoulder. Not because it matters but because it challenges my confidence. Much like public speaking, your ideas, talent, and personality are on display and open to criticism.
Anacapa Island is volcanic rock with a little dirt spread like frosting on the top. It is a critical navigation point opposite Ventura marking the west side of the Santa Barbara Channel. In fact, Anacapa is the furthest east island of The Channel Islands an holds a functional lighthouse.
While painting on location,, what I realized is that I could map the shadows to help create an authentic character of the scene. I drew what I could see for shadow shapes and later filled those in with my near darkest values. Here’s the photograph when I began drawing my pencil outlines of shapes.
I mentally assigned values between 1 and 10 to the top of the sky, horizon sky, ocean, shadowed ocean, sunlit land, and shadowed land.
Mixing colors with Nita Engle’s pallete of reds, blues and yellows turned out to be intuitive because she has thought through and practiced the most frequent color mixing. Here’s the result. Not a masterpiece but it captures the scene. This plein air painting was done in three hours including set-up and under drawing.
If you have Google Earth installed on your computer you can visit this location at https://earth.app.goo.gl/?apn=com.google.earth&isi=293622097&ius=googleearth&link=https%3a%2f%2fearth.google.com%2fweb%2f%4034.0109181,-119.37578355,-0.80644256a,1062.93184534d,35y,-112.97140112h,82.10455027t,360r The cliffs are amazing and dramatic in Google Earth.
