Rocks, Rocks and More Rocks by Southern California Artist, Marian Fortunati

I have to tell you that when I envisioned my plein air work while I was in the Channel Islands, I never imagined it would involve so many cliffs and rocks!  Foolish, yes... but I had pictured water and sands and perhaps a tree... but not really thought about the fact that these islands are constantly scoured by the seas that formed them.  Because of a variety of weather related circumstances, we spent the majority of our time painting from the boat.

Therefore -- rocks, cliffs and sea caves made up a LOT of the scenery.  This is one example... I tried to capture the little bit of mist that was drifting along the wall of the cliff and into the cave.

If you are interested in purchasing this painting, contact me by clicking this link HERE.

About mid-morning of day three I began to moan about how I couldn't paint rocks and Stephen Mirich, one of the artist workshop leaders, tried to give me advice.  He talked about relationships between value and color temperature to help work on my rocks.  You know... I've heard this for years and years now, but it just wasn't registering on how I could apply this to painting those darn rocks.  Later, at night he took me aside and regaled me with his vast collection of images of artists' paintings... past and present masters who did fabulous job in their handling of rocks.   I have to admit, it was inspiring!  Thank you Stephen!

This and the next plein air studies are sea caves.  We saw plenty of them.  We even were awed when Captain Jerry drove our 85 foot dive boat right up into the mouth of one of the largest caves.  I'll provide pictures on my next post, tomorrow.

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The third day of our adventure was Monday, September 27th.  It was also my Dad's 92nd birthday.  David had told us that we would probably not have cell phone reception but I gave it a try and the atmosphere was just right for me to call my Dad and wish him a happy 92nd!!

I was excited to find out also that my Dad, Jim Beach, who had been very sick for most of the summer, but who persevered to get a video project finished by an entry deadline had gotten the results in the mail....

Dad's video had been selected by
The American Motion Picture Society

as one of the Ten Best
for the North American Movie Makers Awards!

Here is what the judges comments said:

GD and GD
Happy Birthday, Dad!

"One thing we have learnt from Jim's films is that he is a man of wide interests and undaunted enthusiasm.
Here he creates a new silver cane handle taking us through the entire process aided by his daughter as the narrator in a neat picture-in-picture.  A reason we like Jim's work is that he is not afraid to include the bits where it all goes wrong, and here we see two failed attempts to create the handle.  We also see what looks like a high risk activity with flaming torches, a wobbly centrifuge, and almost forgotten gloves at a crucial red hot moment of handling a crucible.
The strength of this film lies in Jim's clear presentation of the process.  We really understand what he is doing. ......."

YAY, Dad... I'm proud of you!!

I considered putting his video on U-Tube... but he's waiting for the results from yet another contest!!