San Francisco Ocean Beach w/ship, 40

5: thoughts between paintings
FOG by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.

it sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches and then moves on.


4: the finished painting
I tried my best to use intuition about tone & color relationships, as well as the shapes of the waves as they break. I was going for a tranquil scene yet with some movement. Ocean Beach is rarely this calm, so I took some artistic license with the shoreline.

This painting has been sold.

San Francisco Ocean Beach w/ship, 8.5x11" original oil painting by puci

3: creating the pre-painting composition (using Adobe Photoshop)
Not much difference from the captured image: raised the horizon line and omitted the street light.

2: capturing the selected image

Again, I've included a photo from the live web cam of Ocean Beach. The cam shows the same view of the beach just off Balboa St. and The Great Highway. As a kid, I used to watch those big cargo ships pass along the horizon line --just like this one.

1: planning the destination
Continuing my experimentation with color tones, values & color temperature, this

blog post #40 -and the previous post #39- both feature selected images --not from Google Street Views but rather-- from a streaming-live web camera of Ocean Beach in San Francisco CA, USA: http://ob-kc.com

San Francisco Ocean Beach w/sunglade, 39

5: thoughts between paintings
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." 
~RIP Maya Angelou (1928 ~ 2014)


4: the finished painting
Going so easy on the color contrasts was foreign to me. Even these hard edges are soft. This painting was a lesson in subtleties & acquiescence.

This painting is for sale in my online store (with more photos too): https://www.etsy.com/listing/191435199

San Francisco Ocean Beach w/sun glade, 8.5x11" original oil painting by puci

3: creating the pre-painting composition (using Adobe Photoshop)
I raised the horizon line, widened the ocean & sand area and evened out the tones. 

2: capturing the selected image

This is a photo from the live web cam of Ocean Beach I enjoy so much. Although the cam never changes position, it captures the ever-changing views of the beach just off Balboa St. and The Great Highway: http://ob-kc.com

1: planning the destination

I've been studying the how other painters I admire use color tones, values and color temperature. I've decided that intuition and skill work together. So, I continue working towards improving my painting chops while praying for intuition…

This blog post #39  and the next #40 both feature selected images from virtual photos --not from Google Street Views but from a web camera streaming live images of Ocean Beach in San Francisco CA, USA.

Steps, New Delhi India, 38

day 5: a day (or more) of rest
Where The Mind Is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up in to fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
Written by Rabindranath Tagore before India's independence, this poem represents Tagore's idyllic dream of the new, awakened India.


day 4: the finished painting
Even after I tried to convince myself that the painting was finished, I knew it wasn't really finished. My color harmonies were too forced and uncertain. So, I played around with the color temperatures until something clicked: a night scene. (The hint of stars also serves to remind us what this structure is all about.) 

Also, almost immediately after the night-scene idea emerged, I thought of an album cover I had loved from back-in-the-day. The way our brain encodes and stores certain images, sounds, smells, etc, is so wondrous! 

This painting is for sale in my online store (with more photos too): https://www.etsy.com/listing/188710968

STEPS,  8x10" original oil painting by puci

The first "finished" painting

The window & night-scene image from an old album cover

  

day 3: creating the pre-painting composition (using Adobe Photoshop)
I cropped closer-in to omit the "noise" beyond, and added another visible step.

My composition using Photoshop

day 2: capturing the selected image
We're at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, India.

The Jantar Mantar is a collection of 13 architectural astronomical instruments, built around 1724 by Maharaji Sawai Jai Singh ll. The primary purpose was to predict the times & movements of the sun, moon and planets. (And I'm thinking that the whimsical & wondrous structural shapes were purposeful as well.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jantar_Mantar,_Delhi

The image as scene from Google Maps, Street Views

day 1: planning the destination
I want to portray another, more wondrous, view of India.