Point Dume Perspective - Southern California Landscape - Seascape by Artist Marian Fortunati

Point Dume Perspective © Marian Fortunati 18" x 14" Oil on RayMar Panel

Point Dume, CA
The bluffs above Point Dume are a total dream in the spring.  The native coreopsis just absolutely light up the whole top of the promontory.    In this painting I am looking down the path toward the sea  from the south side of famous outcropping north of Malibu known as Point Dume.

Learning From David Gallup
I started this painting on one of the days when studying with David Gallup in his studio.   He was in the middle of painting three of the most amazing paintings for his upcoming traveling museum show about the Channel Islands.   I have seen many of his paintings after they were already painted but seeing him as he makes changes and progress is totally awesome.   It's not that he paints much while we are in class, but we were able to see the steps from one week to the next and of course David delights us with stories about his thinking and processes.   Fabulous!

Stymied
While in class, I sketched in the basic forms and began to paint the cliff and the coreopsis.  But I really wasn't getting anywhere.   David realized that I wasn't really "feeling" it and came over and mixed up beautiful (I mean absolutely beautiful) piles of paint of the same value and began dragging his brush through several of the piles.   He demonstrated painting the sea.  The direction of his brushstrokes varied - sometimes it was horizontal, sometimes vertical.   He is always telling us to vary our brushwork.  Where I would have made the strokes all horizontal, he said it didn't matter.   It was the value and the color of the work that created the motion of the water.     After that demo, I just stopped painting and enjoyed listening to David and watching what he was doing.

Studio Work
A few weeks ago I decided to try again... maybe to "channel" David.  (ha ha).   I must admit, I did have fun mixing up beautiful piles of paint -- especially for the ocean.   I also tried not to make the paint strokes uniform or in the same direction, but I'm afraid I wasn't as good at it as David was.   I LOVE the way the colors of the ocean began to make the blank canvas into undulating waves approaching the point.   I worked on the coreopsis and other plants and tried to make the path and shadows read.   I liked it.   I hope you do too.

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Point Mugu Coreopsis by Marian Fortunati

Point Mugu Coreopsis © Marian Fortunati 16" x 12" Oil on RayMar Canvas Panel

 I've been doing a lot of thinking lately (which is always a dangerous thing to do).    I love to paint and I especially love to paint outdoors.  Those paintings begin to add up.  Recently on two different occasions, I had reason to search through my stacks of paintings to look for specific paintings that someone has requested.   I realized a few things while pawing through the piles:

• I REALLY have a lot of paintings stacked up.
• I REALLY need to clean up and begin to burn or dispose of many, many paintings...  something I have been reluctant to do and thus have become overrun with stacks of paintings.
• I've become a much better painter over the years... Even though some of those old paintings are still among my favorites, the ratio of dogs to ones I like is getting better.
• As my skills have developed, I'm realizing that some of the work I liked when I was painting several years ago, I no longer think is very good.
• I need to paint for myself instead of painting for shows.   If a show deadline is approaching and I have good work to enter (AND the show will be beneficial ... not just another show), then GREAT!... If I don't ... forget it... It's not the end of the world.
• I've come to the point where I don't need to finish a painting as frequently just so I can post a blog.  I don't want to post my "dogs" any more.  I'll post if I complete a painting I'm happy with.  It may not please everyone else but if I like it or I learned something from it, I'll do a blog post.

Happily on Friday, I received word that my work will be in two shows that I've been hoping to get in to.   Additionally I got a call from the gallery where I have several paintings and they sold two more of them.   Yippee!!

I created the painting in this post using a photo I took when I was at Pt. Mugu painting with David Gallup and his other students.   We painted in the studio again last Monday and this is what I chose to work on.   Although David is able to design paintings from memory and uses photos only to help spark ideas, I tend to rely on them for composition.   I sometimes move things around, too.   Since it was the play of light across the tops of the coreopsis that attracted me initially, for this painting I did a value study at home to sort of practice ahead of time.   I used a board with a reddish ground and blocked in the dark values to begin.   As I worked, David reminded me to try to connect the darks into large shapes changing the colors but not the values, thus better unifying the painting and allowing the viewer to enjoy different parts as the eye roams around.  He said to graduate the color but keep the value the same to preserve the large shape.   He talked about using the values to round out the form of the coreopsis' feathery leaves.   The time just flew by.

One of the fun things about being in a class is to watch the other students as they work.  We have some fabulous artists in that group and it is a joy to see their work.  Although we are all very different in our styles, I try to listen when David talks to them about their work as well.   I enjoy this class a lot.

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California Coreopsis by Southern California Artist Marian Fortunati

California Coreopsis   © Marian Fortunati 14" x 11" Oil On RayMar Canvas Panel Click on the link above for more information and how to purchase this painting.

Plein Air
One of the things I love about painting with David Gallup is that he has been taking his class to places I've never painted before.   I always love painting outdoors and exploring new places.   Monday's class met at Point Dume on the coast just below Oxnard.  It was a fabulous day.  There were many beautiful scenes to paint but I had gone with the intent to paint the coreopsis in bloom.   David sends out a newsletter and his painting of a coreopsis plant in the header just captured my heart.  I wanted to see if I could paint coreopsis too.   Although I have painted among the coreopsis before, I hadn't attempted to paint an actual plant before.  Monday was my day. 

David reminded all of us about planning out our painting ahead of time to help delight the viewer.   The quote of the day to remember was, "Paint the inspiration of the thing... Don't paint the thing."  ... or something along those lines.   I may have to hear it for another 50 times before it sticks in my poor brain.  He came over many times and reminded me not to repeat my shapes or to place them too evenly.   He talked about unifying the darks so that they carry the viewer through the painting.....  even if the darks weren't actually part of the "thing".

The day was gorgeous and we were able to see a HUGE pod of dolphins traveling north along the coastline.   They were about 1/2 mile out, so you couldn't see the individual animals, but you saw the path they left and tiny little spots of spray as they jumped and played at the head of the pod.

My only complaint was that the glare was so bright that I felt like I was going blind.  It was too breezy to really use an umbrella correctly, so I was trying to use my knees to hold it over my shoulder and behind me while I painted so it would shade my palette and the canvas.   However, each time I looked up and out the brilliant sun and vibrant colors just about blinded me.   No matter... I still had a terrific time.    I had decided to paint on a 14"x11" canvas, so the other artists who were doing smaller work managed to do more than one.   I was happy with one.  I may use some of the reference photos I took to try to capture some of the other beauty of the place.  David painted the light hitting a jumble of rocks and one of the other painters' dog.

Coreopsis gigantea (Giant Coreopsis)
This species of coreopsis is a woody perennial plant native to California and Baja California. The stem is a trunk 1-2 m tall, 4-10 cm diameter. Bright green leaves and flowers are on the top of the trunk, the rest of the trunk is bare. The flowers are yellow, daisy-like, 6-20 cm. It is summer deciduous, leaving a bare trunk in summer.

It is distributed on the South California central coast, north and central Southern California coast, the California Channel Islands, and further south.

I had an absolutely glorious day out painting coreopsis on the coast of Southern California near Point Magu.   I absolutely love these strange-looking plants which have a short blooming period but which burst out in glorious color and light up the coast.   Some of my happiest days out plein air painting have been when the coreopsis is in bloom.