I love getting together with other artists to paint on location. It gets the creative juices flowing and pushes me to look at a scene from a different viewpoint or try a new technique. I’m always inspired by the originality and creativity that flow from the most self-effacing people.
I had a chance to meet with a local sketching group while I was in southern California last month. The North County Sketchers gathered at Rancho Santa Fe one day for a morning of sketching, and my friend Karen and I decided to join them. We wandered around looking for the group but didn’t manage to connect initially, so we popped into a charming little café for a cappuccino and some sketching inspiration.
Thyme in the Ranch was decked out for autumn, with pumpkins, gourds, wooly blankets, and other seasonal items on display. It was warm and cozy inside, with the smell of fresh coffee and pastries filling the air. We pulled out our watercolors and spent a lovely hour there, painting and chatting with friendly people who stopped to see our sketches. I can’t think of a happier way to spend a morning.
Later, we wandered over to check in with the sketching group and see what everyone else had painted. What struck was that people had found inspiration in places where I had seen none. It was so cool to see a place through someone else’s eyes, someone who had found beauty in a scene that may have seemed uninteresting to me. In looking at their sketches, it opened my eyes to the beauty that was there all along. I had been looking but not really seeing.
After the sharing time, we headed back over to the café for a wonderful lunch. California freshness at its finest! (What’s not shown in my sketch are the decadent desserts we treated ourselves to!)
A row of fat, colorful pumpkins lining the café’s front steps were the perfect thing to finish out my page.
For the journaling on the facing page, I painted a text box with a stone border. The border design complements the stone steps and fireplace in my sketch. I included the café’s business card and a sticker from the sketching group, just for fun.
To create the border, I first drew irregular stone shapes and inked them with a permanent black pen. Then I mixed up puddles of raw sienna, burnt umber, and blue-grey (ultramarine blue + burnt sienna) on my palette. To create a variegated wash, I started at one corner and brushed on one color at a time as I moved around the rectangle. Each time I reloaded my brush I picked up a contrasting color and placed it next to the one already painted, allowing the colors to merge and blend wet-in-wet.
After the variegated wash was dry, I painted the mortar lines, varying the color a bit, so it wouldn’t look too uniform and monotonous.
Finally, I went back over the stones, adding texture and color variation with a round brush.
This stone-painting technique works well for painting stone buildings, walls, and steps in your sketches.
More from my California travel journal tomorrow!
4 Comments
So lovely. Thank you for sharing how you painted the stone border. I am new to watercolor and journals, so it is always inspiring to see different artists work and learn from them.
Your painting makes me wish I was there to experience it with you. Sounds like a delightful day!
Glad you stopped by, Cindy, and that you found the mini tutorial helpful. There ae plenty of others here on my website. Find them by clicking on the “Tutorials” tab above. Enjoy!
You got to go to Thyme on the Ranch! What a perfect place to sketch! You captured it beautifully. Steve and I love that place. He often stops by on his bike rides with his North County cyclists pals. Will check out the tutorial. Thanks Leslie. Merry Christmas!!
❤️
Beverlee
Next time we’ll have to get together when I’m in the area. We’ll meet at Thyme in the Ranch!