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My View
Often the morning light wakes me up and I have a moment to experience the beauty of the coming day as soon as I get out of bed. This is the view from my bedroom window in Tarzana, CA. Ever changing, always beautiful!
Often the morning light wakes me up and I have a moment to experience the beauty of the coming day as soon as I get out of bed. This is the view from my bedroom window in Tarzana, CA. Ever changing, always beautiful!
Tarzana Street Fair
Over the weekend I had been asked to join a group of artists to share an empty store front for an art show in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Tarzan Series, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Wikipedia writes: "Aiming his work at pulp fiction magazines, Burroughs had his first story, "Under the Moons of Mars", serialized in All-Story Magazine in 1912.Over the weekend I had been asked to join a group of artists to share an empty store front for an art show in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Tarzan Series, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Burroughs soon took up writing full-time and by the time the run of Under the Moons of Mars had finished he had completed two novels, including Tarzan of the Apes, which was published from October 1912 and went on to become one of his most successful series. In either 1915 or 1919, Burroughs purchased a large ranch north of Los Angeles, California, which he named "Tarzana." The citizens of the community that sprang up around the ranch voted to adopt that name when their community, Tarzana, California was formed in 1927.
We had lots of people coming in to see the show and I believe we all had a great time. We were very happy to be inside as the outside 3-digit temperatures made it quite uncomfortable. Outside there were African drummers and parrots and even Tarzan, Jane and an ape!! The poor ape (a guy in a gorilla suit) was just soooo very hot. Tarzan was hot, too, but in a different way.
I had decided to pass the time by painting a small piece in the window to attract visitors. It was fun. I made some great contacts, saw many good friends who came by AND one FB friend who I've chatted online with for a while now... (WOW.. we have so very many connections) came by to meet me in person! What a thrill! Of course people wanted to see what I was painting and I enjoyed talking about what I was doing and answering their questions. It was extra nice, because I was painting a pretty Tarzana sunrise scene.
Discussion in Class
I took it to class on Monday and David Gallup, my teacher liked it but knew it had been painted from a photo. (I used a photo from my computer while I painted.) He said that in real life the land and trees would not be silhouetted as I had painted them. He said the camera cannot capture a scene like this properly and it needed to be painted from life. So this morning I woke up early again to see the sunrise. I was all set up and ready. Although it wasn't as pretty, I could still see the sun behind the trees and at first I totally disagreed with David. The trees WERE dark and silhouetted against the sky, pretty much as I had painted them. However as the sun got closer and closer to the skyline, the light did begin to bleed through the trees and grey greenish color began to appear in the bushes on the hillside. They almost made the far mountains disappear. I then remembered a beautiful painting of David's which was a late evening scene with a soft sunset almost like my sunrise. His trees in a eucalyptus grove were NOT silhouetted and were beautifully painted. (of course) But somehow, having carefully observed the sunrise, it seemed that there just wasn't as much light to give color and definition to the trees and bushes on MY hillside during MY sunrise. I decided to invent the scene a bit because I wanted to get the best out of the skyscape but not have a silhouette. I left the sky as I had painted it and augmented the trees and hillside to be more in line with a higher sun.
We spend quite a bit of time during each class listening to his critiques and suggestions about the plein air and studio work we've brought in that we've done during the week. He brings out great art books all of the time to illustrate his points and we all totally enjoy this time.... almost as much as painting or watching demos. I'm sure this will be a huge topic of discussion in future classes, as I'm not TOTALLY convinced that David is right.... But then I look at his sunsets and they read so beautifully... he MUST be right.... Why can't I see it???
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